How to make and add rubber soles to the slippers

I get a lot of requests to teach how to make shoes. Here is short lesson, how to make, glue and stitch soles to the bottoms of the felt slippers.

1. If you want to make slippers with the hard soles, you should make them on the shoe lasts. Put your slippers  tightly on the shoe lasts and only then add the soles. bottoms of the slippers must be stretched while doing this.

2. Circle your slippers and make the pattern of the soles. This paper pattern will be used to mark the place of the soles on the slippers and to cut soles of the soling material. This time I use yellow micro-porous rubber for the heel and beige natural rubber for the bottom of the sole:

Heel is not neccesary, but this time I was making slippers for my daughter Leda for her kindergarten and footwear had to comply with the requirements of orthopedic (small heel, hard counter).

You can use any soling materials - rubber sheets for soles, thick leather, cork, recycled tire rubber etc...

Heel is 1/2 length of the sole. Mark place of the soles very accurately on the both slippers - this kind of footwear doesn't have seems, so only your accuracy will guarantee, that soles will be in correct place.
3. Grind the detail of the heel with the sandpaper:

4. Apply contact adhesives on the bottoms of the slippers, let it dry. Apply second layer of contact adhesives on the heel area and on the detail of the heel. Use adhesives according to its instruction. Usually surfaces must dry for 10-20 minutes. Then accurately put parts together.
If you glue just one layer of the soles skip part 4 . 

5. I did it outside my studio, as contact adhesives for shoemakers are very toxic.
When parts are put together, struck with a hammer. Apply next layer of the glue - on the whole bottom of the slippers and on the soles. Let them dry and put together, struck with a hammer.  
If you won't be stitching your soles, our slippers are finished.
Soling material must be very elastic if you will glue it without stitching. Otherwise it will peel off while wearing.

6. Usually I stitch soles from the inside through the slipper and sole. But this time the size is too small. My stitching tool don't fit into the slipper, so I made an outer seem:

I use The speedy stitcher sewing awl. It is very useful as it tense stitches and I don't have to make it heard with the fingers. Use waxed thread for shoemaking.

Slippers are finished. 
Moccasins are similar "free form shoes" as the felted shoes, so most of the ideas, how to make soles I found in the tutorials of how to make moccasins :) 

Good luck with your projects!

Supplies for shoemaking you can find in my Etsy shop