Feet Don’t Fail Me Now!

Building the back and shaft of Rocky’s feet took a while. I did a basic pattern piece that would join up with the shape of the front of the paw. Then I shaved down a bunch of fur to 3/4″ pile and cut two of those out. I modified (and shortened) another pair of the grey separating zippers (they no longer separate) and stitched those in on the back of the fur, then slashed it to provide ease for putting the feet on and off, then seamed the upper front edge of the shaft and started hand stitching.

Once the first shaft was stitched to the edge of the shoe (and paw) I tried it on, and discovered the shaft needed to be much thinner in the ankle and calf, so I took about 1.5″ out of the upper seam (3″ from the circumference) and then stitched the front edge of the shaft into the existing fur.
I modified the second shaft the same way before starting assembly, and flipped it inside out on the shoe to do the lower edge stitching, then turned it right side out and stitched it into the fur on the vamp.

I then combed and brushed the heck out of everything to blend the fur pile. There’s a hint of a line where the shaft comes into the vamp, but it will do.

Finally (after confirming I could actually get my feet into them, I used invisible (monofilament) thread to hand couch the lines of braid around the front of the paw to create Rocky’s two toes. Just as for the face, I didn’t find any 1/4″ braid I was happy with, so I made giant pseudo soutache braid by stripping the core out of some black paracord and running a line of straight stitching down its middle. That stabilized its shape and made it easier to use as trim.

Once the toe lines were in place came the moment of truth — how did they look *on*. Let’s just say I am quite pleased, even with the hint of the join line from the shaft showing in the welt.