August 25, 2020

DIY Toddler Tassel Moccasins

It's happening. At my ripe old age of 23, people I know are getting pregnant and having babies. And that means people are having baby showers. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE children and I am so happy for everyone, but being new to the baby shower game left me wondering what to bring. I'm by no means made of money and since I do not have a baby, I'm not quite the expert on knowing what they need/want/require. Then I stumbled upon this AWESOME Pinterest pattern and tutorial for baby moccasins. Now, I changed it up just a little bit since I wanted to add a tassel instead of fringe, but I'll walk you through it.

First of all, gather your materials. You will need:

about an hour and a half of your time
a Sewing machine
1(ish) square feet of a softer, thinner leather + a little extra for tassel
14 inches of 1/4 inch elastic
DAP Contact cement, rubber cement or other leather glue
the pattern which you can get here
something to mark your pattern onto your leather (we LOVE our Roxanne's Quilter's Choice pencils)
Thread (regular thread does work, but something like a topstitching or upholstery thread is ideal)
Shears - sharp shears
A leather needle for your machine
binder clips to hold your leather in place (remember, no pins on leather, the holes are permanent!)

Step One

Cut out your pattern pieces and lay them on the leather, marking the backside (don't forget to flip your pieces so you get a left and right foot!) Be sure to mark the heel arrows so you can match them up when sewing later.

Step Two

Cut your pieces out of the leather. Be sure to use sharp shears for clean lines! I would also strongly recommend keeping all of your left and right pieces together to avoid sewing something on backward.

Step Three

Lay your heel piece wrong side up. Place your fringe piece on top, right side up with about 1/4 inch of overlap on the top of the heel. Stitch across the top. You can use your home machine to do this, just make sure you have a leather needle and some topstitching thread! Check out my step by step graphic to ease this process.

Step Four

flip it over so the heel is facing right side up and the fringe is coming over the top of the heel. Place a piece of elastic along the seam between the right side of the heel and the wrong side of the fringe. Fold the fringe piece under, encasing the elastic and hiding the raw edge. Stitch as close to the fold as you can to secure the elastic in its casing without stitching the elastic itself.

elastic

leather moccasin

stitching leather

Step Five

Repeat this process on the toe of the shoe. Lay your toe piece wrong side up. Place your fringe piece on top in the middle, the wrong side up about 1/4 inch below the top. flip it over and make the same kind of casing you did on the heel.

Step Six

Binder clip the sole and heel pieces together, right sides together, matching the arrows. Sew around the edge around 1/4 inch from the edge.

Step Eight

Flip the moccasin right side out and thread elastic through the casing on the toe. Stitch the elastic together and adjust the casings to cover it.

Step Nine

cut a 1.25 inch by 2.5-inch rectangle and a 1 inch by 1/8 (or smaller) strip of a softer leather (I used red since the baby is going to be born a Georgia fan, as much as my inner SCAD bee and SMU mustang hates it). Cut a very small fringe about 3/4 of the way up the rectangle. On the wrong side of one of the uncut corners, make a loop with the strip and rubber cement it into place. Rubber cement the remaining uncut area and tightly roll your tassel so the loop sticks out on one end. Stitch your tassels to the moccasin front and voila! You just made some baby moccasins.