Crochet Sweater Boots with Flip Flop Soles - Part 1

Hi there, this is Jess from MakeAndDoCrew.com and in this video I'm going to show you how to take a cheap pair of flip-flops and turn them into crochet sweater boots. So to make these boots, here's what we're going to need. One pair of flip-flops, and I recommend sizing down one size from what you typically wear. Two skeins of Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick in the color Gray Marble. A small amount of worsted weight yarn that matches the color of your flip-flops. Hooks in sizes B, K, and L. Six buttons. Some scissors. A sharp tool to poke holes in your flip-flops. And a needle and thread. The first thing I'm going to do is snip the straps off of the flip-flops. And I'm going to save these little rubber pieces to glue in later. So the next thing we're going to do is poke holes all the way around the edge of the flip-flop and those are going to be what we crochet into. And to poke the holes, I'm using this sharp tool. It's meant for working with clay. And if you don't have one of these, you could use something like a drill bit or a tapestry needle. It just needs to be sharp and thin. So there's two ways to approach poking these holes. The first is that you can simply just eyeball and poke your holes essentially a little bit more than a third of an inch apart all the way around the sole. And you're going to want to poke the same number for the right foot and the left foot. So if you're doing that, you're just going to start about mid-sole like that and then poke it up through the top about a quarter of an inch back. And you're going to do that approximately every third of an inch. Now since the gauge of this pattern is so important and the gauge is fully dependent on how frequently your holes are poked around the flip-flop sole, I came up with this little essentially ruler that spaces the holes out at the exact frequency that you need to achieve the gauge in the pattern. And you can get this when you purchase the PDF of the pattern. It's just a couple bucks, and it doesn't have any ads in it, and it's printable. So it's a nice way if you like to crochet just on the couch or using your tablet and you don't want to sit in front of the computer, that's a good way to do it. And it comes with this that you can print out and use it to guide your hole poking. So if you're using this, I would just tape it on the back of the heel like this. And then you're going to poke a hole in each of these dots. And by doing so, you are going to guarantee that you are having the same essentially gauge or frequency of stitches as I do in the pattern. So I'm just going to go ahead and poke holes all the way around the sole, poking them into the middle, and then right out about a quarter of an inch into the sole. So whether or not you're using this little ruler, you're going to do that all the way around. And for reference, this is a size 7'8 in women's, this flip-flop. And I'm going to poke 64 holes to make it all the way around. Now that we have holes poked all the way around the sole, we're going to add a foundation layer of single crochet using the yarn that's the same color as the sole. This is just a worsted weight yarn. And I'm using my size B hook, which is my smallest hook. So to attach the yarn, I'm going to insert my hook from the top down in the back of the heel. And then I'm going to grab the yarn and pull it through, leaving a little bit of a tail. And then I'm going to chain one to attach this strand to the flip-flop sole. And now because I'm right-handed, I'm going to head to the right, just like I would with a normal row of single crochet. I'm going to insert my hook, this time, from the back to the top, grab the yarn, pull it through, and then complete a normal single crochet. So again, I'm inserting my hook in the back toward the top, grabbing the yarn, pulling it through, and then completing a single crochet. So I'm going to continue this way and single crochet all the way around the sole until I end up back at this strand of yarn, which is essentially going to be my stitch marker. Now that we've made it all the way around the sole, back to where we started, I'm going to complete one last single crochet, and then I'm just going to slip stitch into the first single crochet that we made, and pull my yarn through just to complete the row, and then I'm going to cut it and pull it all the way through. So this is something that you could weave in or even tie to the stitch marker and cut it off. Now it's time to use our larger K hook and connect the thicker yarn at the toe. So I'm doing it right here at the edge of the toe, kind of where my big toe would go, and regardless of if you're working on the right or the left foot, we're going to connect the yarn there. So if you're working on this foot, you would just connect it over here, the same sort of spot in the clock, as you would say it. And if you're left-handed, you're just going to reverse this, so you're going to connect it over here because you're going to be working it in this direction. So I just brought my yarn through the first stitch right here, and I'm going to single crochet in each one of these dark gray stitches all the way around the sole. Now that I've finished up my first row of single crochet here, I'm just going to slip stitch into my first stitch of this row to join it, and pull that through like that. And from here out, it might be helpful to reference the written pattern, which you can find at MakeAndDoCrew.com. Just search sweater boots, and that's a free pattern, and you'll be able to follow along in the pattern with this video.