Having decided that I have enough sweaters for the time being, I became interested in slippers. There are lots of Turkish videos on YouTube about the lovely Tunisian slippers with pretty patterns on them so I started watching to learn how to make the slippers. Very few of the videos have subtitles, so I had to learn how to count in Turkish and would watch the videos carefully to see how the crochet or knitting was done. It took 5 or 6 prototypes to figure out the sizing using American-produced yarns, but eventually I had a pattern to fit each of my daughters.
I used stripes of silicone caulking on the soles for slip prevention and the younger daughter reports that it works well.
These are the practice slippers using a worsted weight yarn. The slipper on the right is humongous.
The first successful slippers were made to match a fleece robe I had recently made for my daughter. I
used I Love This Yarn Sport Weight from Hobby Lobby. This yarn didn't come in the coral color I needed, so I pulled apart some 4-ply yarn I had to make a thinner yarn. It actually worked really well.
The white slippers above were made for my younger daughter who likes strawberries. They were made using a sport yarn from Hobby Lobby and a Size E crochet hook.
As a change of pace, the pattern for the red slippers is the Snow Heart Slipper by Sophie and Me. This pattern introduced me to the idea of outsoles and how they give such structure to a slipper. I used Red Heart Super Saver for these slippers and a Size G 6 hook. My older daughter says these slippers are great. I made Duct-Tape Doubles of both of my feet to help when sewing on the soles as well as checking for fit. I put on a pair of really old, worn-out socks, then wrapped several layers of duct tape around my feet. The tricky part was cutting my way out of them. I stuffed them with shreds from my husband's paper shredder.
This slipper is from a Russian video with subtitles and is knit using Red Heart Super Saver plus a random skein of colorful variegated yarn that is now missing its label.
I added an outsole to these slippers.
Experimenting with added soles, this navy slipper is a Tunisian slipper made from sport yarn. I added a tie so the younger daughter could adjust them to her liking. I photographed this version on my left foot double and that's when I noticed that I had overstuffed it making the bottom bulge. This required foot surgery - I slit the bottom of the form open, removed some of the paper shreds and taped the incision back up. Worked very well.
Right now I have three pairs of slippers in the works. There are so many interesting patterns to try using either knit or crochet and different construction methods that you don't get tired of making them.
