Win­ter seems to be drag­ging on in my cor­ner of the world, but that does­n’t stop us from get­ting ready for san­dal weath­er and look­ing for­ward to bloom­ing trees :)

Last year I tried cro­chet­ing shoes because I hate shoe shop­ping. I made some shoes and san­dals with jute soles, I was quite hap­py with how the pat­tern turned out, but the jute sole turned out to be a bit bumpy and uncom­fort­able after walk­ing in them for a while. Sev­er­al friends have sent me this cro­cheted shoes pat­tern by Make & Do Crew, so I thought I’d try using flip flop soles this time.

And I think they turned out not so bad! :D

I thought I’d share how I made them here. As much as I’m shar­ing it with you, I’m also record­ing it so I can remem­ber what to do when these wear out, because they’re real­ly quite com­fort­able! If you try to make them I hope you’d like them too :) It took me just two evenings to make them and I was tak­ing process pho­tos and such, so it’s a fair­ly quick project. And apolo­gies in advance about the poor­ly lit process pho­tos! The weath­er has been so drab late­ly and the light­ing in our apart­ment is bad :S but hope­ful­ly the what the pho­tos are try­ing to show is clear! If not, drop me a note!

I used:

One pair of flip flops (I bought mine from Old Navy for about $5 CAD, in size 5)

One skein of Bernat Hand­i­crafter Cot­ton (80 yrds, mine in Indigo)

3.5 mm hook, and a small­er hook (i.e. 2.5 mm) to weave in ends

Sewing nee­dle

Sewing thread that match­es the colour of yarn

2 half-inch buttons

A long sharp tool (I used an awl for book­bind­ing, but I know that’s not real­ly an every­day handy tool, so I did a quick search for awl alter­na­tives, and the results that came up were met­al skew­ers and long crewel needles)

Mask­ing tape or painter’s tape

Sharpie mark­er

Tape mea­sure

Kitchen scis­sors

What I did:

First, I cut off the straps on the san­dals with kitchen scis­sors. I left the bits of plas­tic in the holes where the straps were attached though, because I plan on wear­ing these out­door and I don’t want holes in the soles of my shoes.

I then put painter’s across the soles and wrapped around the sides, the top piece of tape posi­tioned just a bit above where the straps were attached at the top of the sole. On mine it’s about 1.5″ from the very top of the sole, but that would prob­a­bly be dif­fer­ent if you have a dif­fer­ent size shoe. It does­n’t real­ly mat­ter, as long as the tapes on both shoes are posi­tioned the same way. I put a cou­ple more pieces of tape across so that the taped area is 2.5″ in length. Again you can make it longer or short­er, as long as both shoes are the same.

I then marked one side of the sole on the painter’s tape with a tape mea­sure and mark­er, with a mark­ing every quar­ter-inch apart, at about the mid­point of the thick­ness of the sole, start­ing at one edge of the taped area and end­ing at the oth­er edge of the tape. 

I then poked holes at the mark­ings and going through diag­o­nal­ly from the side to the top of the sole, com­ing out about quar­ter-inch away from the edge at the top of the sole, like so…

Repeat mark­ing and pok­ing holes on the oth­er side of the sole. Remove all the tapes.

I put painter’s tape around the heel, start­ing and end­ing where the orig­i­nal san­dal straps were attached at the bot­tom of the sole, and marked and poked holes in the same way I did one the sides of the sole. Remove the tapes when done.

Repeat for the oth­er shoe. Make sure both shoes have the same num­ber of holes!

With top of the sole fac­ing, and a length of yarn and sewing nee­dle, attach yarn to the first hole at the top on one side of the sole, like so…

Sew through the holes made with blan­ket stitch.

When you get to the last hole, rein­sert the nee­dle down from the top of the sole to the side of the sole, then tie off securely.

Don’t wor­ry about all the loose ends, you can weave them in when you cro­chet the top and heel :)

Repeat the blan­ket stitch on the oth­er side of the sole and the heel, then repeat on the oth­er sole. It will look like this.

Now we’re ready to cro­chet! :D

Left San­dal Top:

With a blan­ket stitch, you would have a ver­ti­cal thread and hor­i­zon­tal thread in each stitch. Attach yarn to the ver­ti­cal thread on the top right of the sole, work 1 sc around this thread, then work 1 sc around the hor­i­zon­tal thread right next to it, then work 1 sc in every hor­i­zon­tal thread to the end of the row, and plac­ing last sc around the last ver­ti­cal thread of the row.

Sec­ond row and every row there­after: ch 1 (does not count as a stitch), sc in each sc, turn. 

You can put your foot on the sole and see how wide you need to make the top as you go. It’s good to make it a bit snug, I imag­ine it will stretch a bit as you wear it. There were 26 rows in mine. End with a wrong side row. 

Attach row: sl st in top left ver­ti­cal thread of the blan­ket stitch on the sole, then sl st togeth­er next sc on the san­dal top and next hor­i­zon­tal thread of blan­ket stitch on the sole, con­tin­ue with sl st in next sc and next hor­i­zon­tal thread till end, end with sl st in ver­ti­cal thread of last blan­ket stitch on the sole, fas­ten off.

Edg­ing: Attach yarn to the ver­ti­cal thread of the blan­ket stitch on the top right side of the sole, ch 1, sc even­ly across top edge of san­dal top. I find that repeat­ing [1 sc in each of the next 3 end of sc row, skip 1 end of row] seems to work well. End­ing with sl st in ver­ti­cal thread of blan­ket stitch on the top left side sole, fas­ten off.

Repeat edg­ing on the bot­tom edge of the san­dal top. Weave in ends.

Left San­dal Heel:

Attach yarn to first ver­ti­cal thread on the right side of the sole, work 1 sc around this thread, then work 1 sc in the hor­i­zon­tal thread right next to it, then work 1 sc in every hor­i­zon­tal thread to the end of the row, and plac­ing last sc around the last ver­ti­cal thread of the row.

Row 2–3: ch 1 (does not count as a stitch), sc in each sc, turn.

Row 4 (decrease row): ch 1, skip first sc, sc in next sc and each sc till there are 2 sc left, 2 sc tog, turn.

Repeat rows 2–4 twice more. Fas­ten off.

Edg­ing: Attach yarn to the first ver­ti­cal thread on the right side of the sole (same stitch where the heel start­ed). ch 1, sc even­ly up the side of the heel. I find that repeat­ing [1 sc in each of the next 3 end of row, skip 1 end of row] seems to work well.

When you reach the top of the right side of the heel piece, ch 30, sc in the 6th ch from hook, sc in every ch (strap made), then sc in each sc across the top of the heel, then sc even­ly down the oth­er side of the heel, end with sl st in last ver­ti­cal thread of the last blan­ket stitch on the heel, fas­ten off. Weave in ends.

Attach but­ton with match­ing thread to the top left cor­ner of the heel piece.

Right San­dal Top:

Make as left san­dal top, except start by attach­ing yarn to the bot­tom left ver­ti­cal thread on the sole. 

Right San­dal Heel:

Make as left san­dal heel, except when cro­chet­ing edg­ing, work sc even­ly up the right side of the heel piece, then sc in each sc across the top of the heel piece, then ch 30, sc in 6th ch from hook, sc in each ch, then work sc even­ly down the left side of the heel piece.

Fin­ish­ing:

Sew but­ton on each heel piece oppo­site of the strap.

Ready to roll :D

These are fair­ly plain-look­ing, but they’re my first try, and I do like sim­ple designs. But maybe one day I’ll try to incor­po­rate fanci­er stitch pat­tern or a closed toe ver­sion! As always if you have any ques­tions please feel free to leave a com­ment below :)

Hope every­one is hav­ing a good weekend!