Like everyone else, I have fallen in love with the French Press Felted Slippers.  Word is the Yarn Harlot’s mention caused technical issues over at French Press Knits!  There’s apparently a slipper knitting revolution in the works.  ‘Tis the season.

I used 2 skeins Plymouth Galway Worsted in bright red and the requisite size 15 needles.  Galway is great because it’s inexpensive, comes in a decent color range, and felts like a dream.  What more can you ask for in your felting wool?  These slippers are very easy to knit and the directions are great.  I initially thought that since they are constructed in multiples pieces that they would be fiddley, but they aren’t.  The assembly really is a snap and it only took maybe a half hour to sew everything together.

I chose some brown leather buttons because I love brown and red together and I liked how the buttons looked on the slippers – yeah I know, it’s a highly evolved system I have for making decisions.  Sewing on the tabs and the buttons wasn’t much harder than seaming things before felting, but I recommend you have a thimble or something because pushing a needle into the felt isn’t the easiest thing on your fingers.  I used embroidery floss and a large eye needle and it worked great.

The slippers fit well (and isn’t that just the very best part of felting your own slippers?) and I really like the puff paint on the soles.  It’s so much easier than sewing the leather onto the bottom.  However, I found that they’ve stretched quite a bit and the paint is coming off in places.  I wear my slippers all the time and I think this style doesn’t hold up as well to strenuous wear as the felted clogs, but darn they’re cute!  I’m going to try to wash them again and see if I can get them to shrink back down to the size my skinny feet need and then I’ll reapply the puff paint.

I still need to finish the oatmeal colored version of these slippers for my grandmother, but that’s on the agenda for this weekend.  I’ll have pictures of her little tiny ones (I had to felt them down to a size 4!) as soon as I’m finished with them.  I think these will work much better for her arthritic feet than the felted clogs I made her last year, but we’ll see on Christmas Eve.

Happy Friday and good luck with all of your last minute Christmas tasks.