How to keep from tripping with loose sandals

I love sandals especially just for around the house because hello sewing and bare feet do not mix. I am always dropping pins and just because his luck ran that way, my dad would always be the one to get one jammed in his foot. However lately due to a bad leg sometimes my foot drags or I have to keep it locked and that means lifting it flat footed and if your sandals are loose very easy to catch it on a rug or step or whatever.

Very nice sandals but as you can tell way too loose. I can either walk with toes clenched around the strap (very uncomfortable) or pray I don't catch it on the rug, lose my balance, fall sideways, luckily landing on a chair and hitting the table, knocking over the glass that I set on the edge of the sewing table because my hands were full and I had not tightened the lid and spilling lemonade on my sewing machine. I am very, very familiar with Murphy's law. Luckily the lid was loose but still on so no damage. So time to fix the problem.

Luckily these seem fairly easy to do first thing was to take care of the plastic comfort slide. I did not want to remove it so I trimmed it instead.

I keep one seam ripper for jobs like this and one for actual seam ripping so I do not dull the blade. You can also use small sharp scissors but I find better control this way. Once I cut all the way around I slice up and remove the piece. To make sure the remaining half does not irritate my foot I use an emery board to smooth the plastic.

I am lucky because in this one you can see the leather loops through instead of sewn directly so I pushed the loop lower and moved the plastic up until I had it in the right place.

I used a thimble to help push the needle through the leather and made sure the stitches were small and pulled tight. Also to prevent possible irritation make sure the knot beginning and ending are in the front.

Here you can see the real difference in height.

Much better fit and more comfortable. If there is no loop then fold the strap and stitch the top and bottom of the fold to make sure there is no gap. In this case you would have to remove the plastic guard. If you slice it carefully you could put it back with a little goop or buy the ones they sell on line.