A few weeks ago I was asked to model in the Asia Pacific L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival for local store Glamaz. They stock a lot of my favorite brands like Lizlisa etc so I said HELL YES :DAnyway the look called for white fur shoes to match the coat but they didn’t have any in stock in my size at the time so I figured it was a good chance just to make some myself.You need:

• Base shoes with a decent heel and an ankle strap. I’ll do another version for non-ankle strap shoes later.
• Faux fur
• Material for the inside, I used polar fleece
• Sewing machine or needle and thread (sewing fake fur by hand is VERY tedious though)
• Ribbons (optional)

So before I start just a quick tip on sewing faux fur: make sure the hairs and pointing away from the stitching as much as you can before you sew otherwise it will get caught in the stitching and be very annoying to get undone later. Also if you’re going to cut, separate the pile down the cut line before you snip so you get minimum hair all over the place.

Right, so we need to measure how long the faux fur needs to be. Wrap it around one of the shoes and use that as a length measurement. Remember to include a seam allowance and it’s always better to cut too much than too little.

So this is the height and width I ended up with. Make sure it’s tall enough to cover the top of the shoe easily as well as hide your toes.

I made sure to leave plenty extra on the top and sides for seams.

Cut out a matching piece of polar fleece but make it around 5cm shorter in the height measurement. This is because we really don’t want it sticking out on the wrong side.

Place the polar fleece on the furry side of the faux fur and stitch down both long sides so it makes a tube.

You should have something like this, see that there’s more fur than polar fleece when it’s laid flat.

Turn it inside out and you can see how it’s supposed to sit better.

And wrapped around the shoe you can see it coming together.

Measure how big it needs to be to get around the shoe and then stitch the ends of the tube together. I started at the end of the polar fleece, went around to the fur then finished up at the bottom of the polar fleece again. You can’t do the whole thing on the machine because it needs to turn slightly inside out to finish up so you will need to leave a gap at the end, it’s easier to hand stitch polar fleece so leave it there.

Afterwards you should have this:

Hand stitch up the gap and make one  for the other shoe too.

Now to hold them onto the shoe you have a couple of options:

• Slide them on and hope they don’t fall down during the day. Not recommended.
• Add two ribbon loops that you can slide the ankle strap of the shoe through so it stays in place all day. Recommended.
• Rush out the door because you are running late for your own fashion show and cut a couple of holes in the polar fleece so you can slide the ankle strap of the shoe through it. It’ll hold for now until you can do something a bit better and more permanent like the ribbon option later.

Anyway, ribbon is obviously the best option, just stitch a couple of little pieces on the inside that line up with the ankle straps on the shoes and you’re good to go.

Pop the cuff on the shoe and you’re finished! Really much easier than it actually sounds XD

I added a pin bow off one of my dresses to each side and that’s how the crisis was averted 😀

And for bonus points, here’s a photo of me wearing them during the practice run 😀

I really like them and now I’m thinking of buying a couple of other colours of fur so I can have different cuffs for different shoes. What do you guys think?