How to Make Felt Booties

Babies to the left of me, babies to the right... they're everywhere! Sometimes I feel like the only woman who doesn't have a bun in the oven but that's ok, I'm happy to make things for other people's kids! For example, this post from Purlbee shows how to make felt booties, perfect for the wee one who'll grow out of them sooner than you think!

All you need is:

1. Some felt
2. Some embroidery thread
3. A needle
4. Some elastic
5. A printer and scissors to cut out the template
6. Some pins (about 20 pins -- 10 per shoe)

Cut out the pattern, trace it onto the felt (I didn't have an erasable marker so I just used a pen), and pin a long piece to a short piece. Pretty self explanatory, you're making a shoe!

By the time you're done pinning both shoes, you'll see they're approximately 4" long, the size of a 3-month old baby's feet. Hopefully.

And then comes the sewing... my big mistake for this project? Reading the instructions as needing "4-6 inches" of thread instead of "46 inches". I actually didn't need that much, I was able to sew with 36 inches. Now I don't know about you, but her instructions for a button hole stitch made no sense to me whatsoever so I turned to this video for help. See, you don't have to already know how to sew to do this project!

If you can't see the video, here's all you have to do: always sew from the back to the front and when the thread is almost taut, stick the needle through the thread and then pull it taut, like the photo below.

The hardest part for me was sewing the elastic, but it really shouldn't take more than 5 minutes per shoe. It's just making sure the elastic is sewn in on both sides that proves to be a bit awkward but not impossible.

And voila! Slippers for the little one!

TOTAL COSTS: About $18 (to make about 24 shoes)
$12 for 2 packs of different colored felt from Fiddlesticks in San Francisco
$.60 for embroidery thread from a knitter at Zoe Zeynep in Los Angeles
$2.59 for elastic from Michael's
$2.99 for pins from Vons
Needle, scissors, and printer/paper already on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: First time 1 hr. 20 minutes; Second time 54 minutes
First time: 35 minutes to cut out felt and pin shoes, 40 minutes to sew both shoes, 5 minutes to sew elastic
Second time: 16 minutes to cut out felt and pin shoes, 33 minutes to sew both shoes, 5 minutes to sew elastic
See? The more you do it, the faster you'll get!

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 3 out of 5
For someone who doesn't sew, I found this to be moderately difficult but not impossible! It does get easier the more shoes you make!