Personalised Slippers

A very good friend of mine requested that I make her some of these knitted slippers  for her wedding. I decided that I would try and add something a little special. I wanted to add 'Mrs' on one foot and 'Carter' to the other. 

I had never made up my own pattern before so it was a bit of an experiement...  I started with choosing a font that I liked, that wouldn't bee too intricate to knit:

I then used this to create a knitting chart by colouring in squares on a grid (I used Excel, but this could easily be done by hand on paper, or using one of the online generators like this one )

The original slipper pattern says to cast on 32 stitches, which roughly breaks down as 11 stitches forming each side of the slipper and 10 stitches for the sole. Then the slipper I knitted previously had 38 rows to complete the length of the sole, so my text needed to be 10 x 38 stitches. Therefore I made my chart 10 x 38 squares (1 square = 1 stitch)

Once I had my chart, I had to work out how to incorporate this into the existing slipper pattern. The sole was originally garter stitch, but I needed to amend this to stockinette stitch to be make a flat surface for the text.

I was pretty pleased with the way the text turned out in the end. I will use this same method if I want to knit writing again, and hopefully my instructions make enough sense that you could do the same.

Because the Stockinette stitches are less stretchy, I found the slippers a little shallow this time, so I added a 'collar' to the edge using bigger needles, and this just made them sit a little more comfortably on the foot:

So here is the amended pattern including extra stitches to make the slipper a little deeper:

Cast on 44 stitches
*Work in Garter Stitch for 17 stitches
Work in Stockinette Stich for 10 stitches [following knit chart for colour changes]
Work in Garter Stitch for Remaining 17 stitches*
Repeat * until work measures 5 inches.
After reaching the 5 inch mark, start ribbing (K2, P2).
Continue in ribbing until piece measures one inch less than length of your foot.
Last row: *K2 tog; repeat form * across row, 16 st remaining.
Repeat K2 tog for one more row, 8 st remaining.