Shoes can be weird, and when choosing some for a costume you might not be able to find anything that looks right! This is where shoe covers come in. A shoe, or boot, cover is a covering you make to fit over your shoe or boot, to make it look like the character's. This is a great way to avoid hurting your feet at the con, because you can wear your regular sneakers underneath the cover!

These are some shoe covers that I have made. The middle is the one we will be making in the example. It is made with upholstry pleather.

Materials:

• A Pair of Shoes
• Enough fabric to cover the shoes (1-2 meters)
• Thick elastic
• A sewing machine
• Straightpins
• A pencilcrayon

Step 1:
We are going to start by cutting out the required fabric for the project. So lay out your fabric on a flat surface with the "wrong" side facing up (1st image below), and place the front of your shoe down on the fabric. You want the two ends to meet at the two of the heel of the shoe (2nd image below) with about 1/2 an inch leeway, more if you think it is needed.

Position your shoe so that the left edge of the fabric can meet the point above the heel, then pull up the right edge and make a mark with your pencil crayon where they meet. This is where you will cut so that the ends can easily meet eachother, as shown below.

Step 2:

Pull the two edges up together and pin them together so the fabric hugs the shoe. If you were using a very large piece of fabric, you might have something that looks like image 1 below. You will need to cut that excess off. Make a line with your pencil crayon an inch above the top of the shoe, and then cut off the excess above the line. *If you would like to conserve fabric, save the cutting from part 1 until this point, using the two pencil crayon guides to cut a square section from your entire fabric.

After cutting, your shoe cover should look like image 2 below.

Step 3:

If you push down on the front of the shoe, where the laces usually are, then two triangular edges will appear. These will need to be cut off but first you need to pin along the bottom of them. In image 2 below you can see the red lines showing you where to pin, make sure they pin right through the triangle piece. Then, cut off the excess so your pinned piece looks like images 3 below.

Step 4:

Slide the cover off the shoe and set the pinned edges. Make sure to sew as close to the pins as possible, but don't make it tighter than it already is, or it might not fit the shoe. After sewing, trim down the top, and loose edges as needed. Then flip rightside out and put over the shoe. Now you can fold down the top and hem it. The shoe cover now needs a way to stay on the shoe.

Step 5:

We will be attaching our shoe cover with the elastic method, elastic that attached to the boot cover and slides over the shoe. You can also make a fabric sole like in this tutorial that your shoe slides into. This will take away from traction from your shoes, but is very secure.

Similar to how we started the boot cover you will wrap the elastic around the shoe and pin where it meets at the heel. Then clip off the excess elastic. Keep the elastic circle on the shoe, and cut two to three smaller pieces of elastic. These will be stretched over the bottom of the shoe in a later step to keep the shoe cover on. Sew up the pinned part of the elastic.

Put the elastic back on the shoe and trim the sewn edge if needed. Then pull the boot cover (right side out) over the shoe and the elastic. Pin the elastic to the shoe cover, and slide them off. Sew the elastic to the boot cover.

Next, place the boot cover back on the shoe. You want to use the smaller pieces of elastic now. Place one piece of elastic over the sole of the shoe, one on the arch of the shoe, and possibly one over the heel depending on how much support you want. Pin the elastic onto the elastic area inside the boot cover.

Slide off the boot cover (this will be more difficult with the elastic pinned on) and sew the new pieces of elastic onto the boot cover. Remove the pins, and you are finished! Trim and excess threads.

Elastic frame (not sewn into bootcover)

Tips & Pointers:

- If you are not using vinyl, or another non-fraying fabric, then you will want to hem the bottom before doing step 5! Remember to incorporate 5/8th of an inch at the bottom of your shoe cover for this hem!

- You can make the elastic frame (see step 5's image) first and then sew it to the shoe cover, this will hide where the elastic pieces meet your shoe cover but will be much harder to sew.

- If the shoe cover is not staying on your foot well it may meen you need more elastic support, or thicker elastic support. If you still have problems, then try out the fabric sole that was mentioned in step 5. If you still have problems, you probably made the shoe cover too tight for your shoe, and so it won't stay on.