Mini Moc madness!

I sewed up two more pairs of Mini Mocs last night. The ones on the right are made out of the gray wool from the same sweater I've already used to make a previous pair of Mini Mocs and two pairs of longies. That one sweater went a long way! It's finally gone, though :)

The ones on the left are denim, lined with fleece. The denim is from some old pairs of jeans of mine. For some reason, these days, I am always getting holes in the knees of my jeans. I think it has to do with having kids and crawling around down on the floor a lot more. Anyway, last summer, I had three or four pairs of jeans with holes in the knees, and only one pair of jean shorts. So I cut off the jeans and hemmed them to make jean shorts. They don't look great (jeans are much tighter on the thighs than actual jean shorts...) but they're functional.

That project left me with a bunch of scraps of denim. I saved them, thinking surely I could find some use for them. And I finally did! :) For the topstitching on these Mini Mocs, I used the same thread that I used on the hems of my "new" jean shorts. I got it at Wal-mart. It's the same brownish-yellow color as the thread that is used on the stitching for actual jeans, and it's stronger than normal thread to hold up while sewing thick denim. It works well and looks good.

Here's a close-up of the heel of the shoe, showing the stitching. I used the inside seam of the jeans on the heel, mostly because it was hard to find a wide-enough strip of material that did not have a seam :) But I think it looks cute, too!

I did goof a little while sewing these, and the shoe on the right in the first picture above is noticeably narrower than the one on the left. This is because I did leather soles (on the denim shoes and also the wool ones), and you can't really pin leather. That makes it tricky to get all the layers of fabric lined up correctly so that you can get the right seam allowance. It's also tricky to get the right seam allowance when you're sewing on a curve, as you have to do with shoes. So I ended up stitching a little too far from the edge of the sole on that shoe, resulting in it being narrower than it should. I think I may redo it when I get the chance, since I still have plenty of denim left!

I should mention that I purchased special leather sewing needles and heavy thread to use for sewing these soles on to the shoes. Those supplies are easy to find at Joann's.

Once I redo that one denim shoe, I think I'm done with shoes for a while. At least until Noob outgrows these shoes and needs new ones :)

Even more Mini Mocs

The Mini Mocs that I sewed for Noob about a month ago have seen a ton of use! They're working out beautifully. So I'm working to sew up a few more pairs, to give him some more stylin' shoe options. This pair is made out of scraps from the same wool sweater that I used to make his longies.

The soles are leather, made out of a genuine leather skirt that I bought at a local thrift store for 99 cents. Leather should be more durable than the faux suede that I used on the other pair of Mini Mocs (although the faux suede is holding up nicely too, and washes really well).

Of course, they coordinate perfectly with his new longies! (Ignore the shirt, which doesn't coordinate so well with either.)

Hee hee :)

More Mini Mocs: Soft soled shoes

 

Noob took his first steps about two weeks ago and is now toddling all over the place. He does really well in the playroom upstairs, which is carpeted, but he was having a lot of trouble walking downstairs, on our hardwood floors. Socks or pajama bottoms are just too slippery, and since it's chilly in our house these days, I hate to see him walking around barefoot. So I used the Sew Darling Mini Mocs pattern (the same one I used for Littles' Silvermist slippers) to sew a pair of soft soled shoes for him.

As with Littles' slippers, I cut the pattern a little bit wider -- Noob hasn't gotten fitted for real shoes yet, but from working with this pattern, it looks like he has also inherited his daddy's wide feet. I used the 6-12 month length but the 12-18 month width.

I made this pair out of scrap fleece (left over from sewing his sleep sack) for the tops and faux suede for the soles. The "suede" is actually 100% polyester, from Joann's home décor section. I often see small pieces of it in the remnants bin, which works well, because you don't need much of it to make these shoes. It comes in all sorts of different colors. It is not very thick, so I don't think it would work well for outdoor use, but it's great around the house. It does fray, and the pattern leaves unfinished edges, so I'll have to see if it holds up OK over time. But if it doesn't, I'll just sew another pair of shoes :)

I suppose I could have used the same anti-slip sole fabric that I used on the soles of the Silvermist slippers, but I wanted these to look less like slippers and more like real shoes.

Here are some action shots! You can see our hardwood floors in the pictures. The shoes do a great job of staying put on Noob's feet and keeping him from sliding around on the floor.

I'm definitely going to sew some more pairs of these for Noob to wear this winter, including some with real leather soles for more heavy-duty usage.