DIY Work Boots for CNA Shifts

Eight hours of walking/trotting on concrete will give your feet a pounding case of foot-ache. I can't afford to buy expensive shoes that never seem to be able to stand up to the pounding they get for more than a few months at the most. 

So I decided maybe I ought to take a shot at creating my own.

Over the course of the past year or so I've made pairs of boots out of felted wool (an old coat) so I know I can do it. The problem in this case is having a sole that will protect my feet and legs. The ones I've made have really soft soles of the same felted wool. They're great and I love them, but I know for a fact that they'd never ever be comfortable for long at my CNA shift-work job.

A friend of mine made me a couple of pairs of 'boots' for me to use with my Character Wardrobes - she used 100% wool yarn, knitted big tubes (stitched the big knitted rectangles into tubes that is, with one end closed), washed them on hot setting, dried them on hot setting (checking periodically for size), and handed them over to me. I made insoles out of layers cut from an old wool blanket (felted again) and have never in my life had happier feet. They're about worn out, the boots I made from the felted wool 'tubes' my friend made, but they're going to get put to use again.

As a first experiment I cut foot-shaped soles out of some scrap floor padding that had been used for a gymnastics program, just a little bigger than my own foot. These I put into the boot tubes in place of the old felted wool blanket insoles. 

Tonight I took along to work the mock-ups of the work shoes/boots I want to try ... and my feet/legs never hurt at all once I put them on! So that's one idea that was worth trying.

Tomorrow I'm taking it a step further. 

I have a pair of old flip-flops with thick soles that I have a hundred thousand times wished I could wear to work, or that they made shoes with such soles.

In the photo above you can see how deep those soles are, and that I've clipped the toe straps out of them. They're also significantly too big for me but they still fit into the boot tubes! And, since I've been wearing them for years on end, obviously they're not too big for me to walk in.

At this point I could not possibly care less how big my feet look, or how strange. I want to be able to work a full shift without hurting. The size of these will allow me to also put in layers of felted wool under my feet if I want to. Since it's all experimental, I'm going to go without the extra wool for tomorrow's shift, see how well it works with just the soles of the flip-flops.

Above, you can see the top and side views with the tops of the boots up instead of folded down. The ankle straps are sleeve cuffs from a leather jacket that I cut up to use for another project. They work great for both the initial shaping of the tube (get the tube a little damp, add the straps to hold the ankle part in place, and wear them until they're dry - they mold to your foot; in this case it's the flip-flop sole I want them to mold to) and for holding the boots firmly in place as you wear them. Any kind of fastening would do - I could use strips of fabric, too.

Now, what I'm hoping for is that the 'breathing' trait of the felted wool will work to keep my feet comfortable (no sweating but plenty warm) and the bigger size of the flip-flops will give my toes plenty of wiggle room (something that seems to be sadly missing in most shoes). I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to: add the felted wool insole liners, or (since I don't care how big my feet look) wear as 'socks' the form-fitting boots I made before out of that old felted wool coat, or ... I dunno ... come up with some felted wool 'booties' to wear. 

I'll no doubt end up making myself some variation of little slipper liners as the cutouts tend to follow my foot action and wind up getting pushed where they do me the least amount of good. I tried just putting a couple of layers of felted wool into my regular work shoes - it helped a lot, believe me - but they work their way back and toward the inside as I tend to toe-walk when I'm in a hurry (which is all the time on this job!) and most of the time I walk more on the outsides of my feet than the insides or dead center, don't ask me why. So slipper liners will help. I don't want to glue the liners in place because I'll go through a lot of them.

As for the outer soles ... right now I don't have any. Here's what keeps me from slipping and sliding on woolen 'soles' while I'm working out the design of these work boots.

Yup. Duct tape. You can see where the seam gave way in this tube from my wearing these boots so much. It's that gappy looking place down the center of the bottom of the boot. Rather than restitch it I just left it and taped over it. It's holding just fine so far but is not a perfect solution. Gives me a bit of extra space to work with, room for the soles to go in (although the felted wool stretches some, too).

When I get done playing with these, I'll ask my friend to make me another pair of tubes, cut and stitch to shape the toe the way I want it (felted wool does not fray!), get the soles put in, and dip the bottoms of them in liquid rubber (and up the sides of the 'shoe' part to about the height of the inside soles). That will keep them from getting soggy if I walk in wet snow or dew or rain-wet grass. It will also give me a good no-slip outer sole. I hope. If not, I'll go back to using duct tape and just keep my feet out of wet snow and such.

I do love wool.

Even if my feet do get wet in these things in the dead of winter, they aren't going to freeze. Again, I'm not exactly sure why that is but apparently it's true. They'd get cold, but not frozen. Haven't had to test it out and don't intend to, but it's reassuring nonetheless.

So ... hopefully I'll come up with a way to keep my feet and legs comfortable while I work.

LittleEthan told Alaric, 'You will do what you have to do when you have to do it, but you don't have to do it hungry,' when Alaric objected to accepting help for his people.

So now I tell myself, 'You will do what you have to do when you have to do it, but you don't have to do it with your feet and legs hurting.'

Nobody's offering me a kindgom's ransom - but perhaps I've been given something better: a creative mind that can imagine a way to 'fix' a problem, and the chutzpah to give it a try. And another try, and another, and another ... until something works.