Thursday, November 6, 2014

No Button Clawed Feet for Halloween

Halloween is this week (at the time of writing this post) and I have purchased an adorable Dinosaur costume for Lucky from Carter's.  I wasn't planning on doing anything handmade for this costume (I have a whole photoshoot planned), but then I realized that his feet were missing something special to go along with the costume.  What can I whip up on a Wednesday afternoon when Halloween is on Friday?



Then I discovered the Knit No Button Baby Booties pattern on Ravelry.  The shaping looked simple enough for me to whip up with some adjustments for Lucky's foot.  The companion crochet pattern (Crochet No Button Baby Booties) has a size chart with dimensions for what you would need to do for different feet sizes.  While the construction of the crochet bootie is a little different, I think that I should be able to combine the two instructions to make something that will fit Lucky's foot.  


Since I wasn't going to fiddle with gauge, I decided to just pick a needle and go with it.  I haven't used my straight needles in AGES so I went over and after some deliberation I selected a size 10.  This is within the recommended range for Brava Bulky yarn in peapod, and I don't need the fabric to be particularly dense.  


According to the chart from the crochet pattern, I want to make a rectangle that is 1.75" wide by 10.75" long for a size 4 (9-12 month) bootie.  I cast on 8 sts which gave me a width of about 2" (I had intended to do 10 as directed but I guess I forgot.  I didn't notice until I was joining them together!  ).  as I was knitting, I compared the knitting to Lucky's shoe.  In the end, I ended up knitting for 9" which ended up being 41 rows.  This is VERY stretchy so hopefully it will fit on his foot.  I hope that the height is enough, but I should be able to check the first one when Lucky wakes up from his nap.  


The goal for the length of the bottom of the foot is 4.5".  This is consistent with the bottom of his shoe, so I think I'll want to be right below that so I can get a tight fit.  If the shoe is too big, I can alway add a draw string to keep the costume on.  The fabric is stretchy, so I did 17 rows (4") and then the decreases (K2tog twice then SSK twice) and bound off.  


I pinned the shoe before sewing the bottom closed.  I made sure to do it loosely so it would be stretchy.  


I made sure to secure the second foot in the opposite direction.  I finished both booties during an afternoon nap.  Talk about a fast project!  


So they fit his feet... but don't stay on very well.  With socks it is even harder to keep them on his feet.  I might need to add a tie to get them to stay on.  It was really hard to photograph them on Lucky with my phone, but I think that would have been the case if they had stayed on well.  


Now that the booties were done it was time to turn them into claws.  From photographing them above I learned that I wanted to add the details just below where the join on the front occurred so the claws will be on the front of the foot.  I made 3 french knots on the front of each bootie to create the claws.  


Finally, to help prevent the slip a bit, I used some white puffy paint on the bottom of each shoe.  The puff paint helps a little, but with the slippers slipping off of the foot I'm not sure how much good it is acutally doing.  


I still have to solve how I am going to keep them on his feet, but that is something I can figure out on Halloween.


I really love when there is a project I can complete entirely out of my stash!  This is why it is worthwhile to hold onto so much yarn, right?