Snowshoe Pads

I’m staying in the winter spirit with this post!

One thing I discovered about snowshoes in my recently posted about winter adventure is that the crampons (the metal spiked bits that help with traction) on the bottom are pretty sharp (see the photo below). That’s useful when walking, but less useful for transport, especially in a packed trunk!

I wanted to make sure that my snowshoes don’t inadvertently scratch or mar anything, so I decided to make some pads to cover the crampons for storage and transport. I wanted to use as many items from my stash as possible.

I found a few fabrics that were perfect candidates for this project. Purple wool (or at least I thought it was wool until my iron melted it a little… so it’s definitely not 100% wool!) scraps gifted to me, green quilted cotton scraps from about 25 years ago (that I made an elf costume for Christmas out of when I was a child, an amusing memory, to be sure), lavender grosgrain gifted to me, and a bit of velcro left over from recovering my couches in 2020.

I measured the area of the crampons and cut two layers of my quilted fabric for each area (which just used up the scraps perfectly!). I used my overlock machine to attach the two layers and finish the edges at the same time. Then I cut two layers of the purple ‘wool’ to cover the entire crampon area on each snowshoe, sewed those, and turned them right side out. I finished the purple edges by top stitching them twice around all sides. Then I topstitched the quilted pads on in the appropriate spots.

The only thing left was a way to hold the finished pads in place! For that, I sewed lengths of the grosgrain on one side, finished the other ends of the ribbons, and added velcro. Then I sewed a corresponding piece of velcro onto the purple base. Below are the results of these efforts.

Success! Now I have easily removable pads to protect other things from being damaged by the crampons. And, bonus, the pads are cotton and can help absorb excess moisture after I wear the snowshoes!