Sewn Felt Slippers

I came across this Martha Stewart how-to for some sewn felt slippers.  I've been on serious lookout for new slippers lately which has been surprisingly difficult.  All the lady slippers available for purchase look like either your grandma wears them in her bathroom or your little sister wears them as her feet are dangling from her chair while she eats breakfast at the kitchen table.  Most of them are thong slippers or open toe which makes no sense to me since the primary reason I wear slippers is to keep my ice toes thawed.  They are also usually made out of fabric that should be used for an infant's teddy bear.  For these reasons I have to resort to mens slippers which are fantastic foot huggers perfect for gliding from sewing machine to sewing machine all day but come in hideous colors (apparently any color besides black, navy, and taupe falls off the end of the Earth when it comes to mens footwear).

The original tutorial calls for an 18 x 18 3mm piece of wool which gives you a pair of monochrome slippers.  I'm more of a two tone kind of gal and don't like to follow directions verbatim so I modified the pattern, what else is new.  You can see a more informative video here since the instructions on the link above aren't super clear.

Above is the original pattern which with the fold in the pattern gives you the top and bottom sides.

I cut it in half and added a tiny 1/8" hand sewing seam allowance and widened the opening for the foot.

I cut the top half out of gold felt and the bottom half out of grey felt.  If you decide on taking up the 2 tone slipper challenge remember to put a darker color on the bottom since it will get dirty.

Then the sewing begins.  The drawback to doing a 2 tone slipper is that you have to sew the entire way around the slipper instead of just halfway (because it's on the fold) but at the end you have a way cooler slipper.  You decide.

Now that my finger is a bruised pincushion from hand sewing around the edge with embroidery thread (I really need to learn how to use a thimble) it's time to move onto the next step.

I matched up and sewed the back edges of the slipper.  After that I tucked in and sewed the heel flap of the slipper and then turned the whole thing inside out.

Then it looked something like this (starting to look like a slipper now).  I rounded the edge of the flat with scissors and stitched it to the heel.

Heel stitching in progress

To secure the flaps I did a dotted line stitch all the way around the cuff instead of sewing the bottom edge to the shoe.  It looks more awesome since I used such a think contrasting thread and also by doing it this way I'm not covering up my other lovely stitching.

Ta-da!!  It's finished! Side view: isn't it way better with 2 colors?

 Top view

Foot view: please ignore the terrible sock mark.  I never claimed to be a foot model.

Now all I have to do is make the other shoe...