How To Repair Felted Slippers

Hi, Anna-Liza here.

A while back, I fabricated a pair of felted slippers for Darlin' K. He strongly objected to the thought of my sewing suede soles to them, as he's fond of sliding around our forest floors. As perhaps you might take foreseen, he has at present worn holes in the soles of his slippers!

I'll be sewing suede soles onto them, simply Sylvia at POSH (aka Sylvia'southward House of Fuzzy Fissure) suggested I needle felt patches over the holes, then there would not be thin, cold spots. Here'southward how I did it.

At first I planned to utilize the aforementioned yarn I used to brand the slippers, doing a sort of woven mat with them and and then felting them onto the slipper soles, only I soon realized that this was somewhat likely to produce lumps. As the holes are precisely at the points where he puts the near pressure level on the slipper soles, this would be a bad matter.

And so I switched to roving. I still contrived to have the fibers go in a criss-cross pattern over the holes and onto the edges of the material. I put one wodge (technical term) of roving on the outside of the slipper and ane on the inside.

This shows the roving on the inside of the heel, before I put some over the outside.

Not the greatest movie, but this shows the roving laid over the exterior of the heel and partly felted on.

The existing fabric, having been felted down pretty well, seemed to need a lilliputian help in property the new felting, so having new roving on each side gave a better anchor. Also, this smoothed the edges of the holes somewhat and reduced the dreaded lumpage. So information technology's sort of a sandwich of new roving-worn slipper-new roving. Y'all might find information technology desirable to add a trivial extra roving where the pigsty is to make information technology more than even, simply be careful not to overdo it.

Fixing the heels was relatively easy, equally I could easily reach both sides of the holes and could insert a foam cake and another felt base (an elongated, felted ball, basically) into the heel to support it when I worked on the outside bits.

That'south the felting base within the heel. Since information technology is fabricated of felt, too, I put a canvas of plastic wrap between it and the patch so I could tell where to carve up them.

That's the felting base of operations, sitting on a small block of 2″ upholstery foam I utilize as a base of operations also. The upholstery foam doesn't fit the curves of the heel as well every bit the felt base does.

And here's a little needle activeness for you!

Outside and inside!

The holes in the soles were more than difficult. I could still slide the oblong felting base inside the slipper for the piece of work on the exterior, merely getting the needle within the slipper in a position where I could motion it effectively was more difficult. I'm proud to say I achieved this without impaling myself or breaking a needle. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that and take pictures of myself doing it at the same time, as I needed my other hand to concord the slipper in position.

Here are two of the finished patches.

I remember information technology took me less than an hour to repair four holes. That included taking pictures. These patches would non final long on their own, but they should be okay with the new suede soles added to them. We'll see how they hold up!

Et voilà!