Project: A boot for a cast

Guaranteed to keep her cast and foot dry

Before

Yep, K1 broke her ankle sledding last weekend.   She's sporting a lovely blue cast.  It being winter and all, and there being the very real necessity of keeping this thing dry and warm, we put our heads to making a removable boot for her cast. That cute little toe sock thing with the elastic around the back came from the doc's office when she got the cast on.  Leave it on when you're making the boot.

Materials:

•  heavy plastic trash bag
• scotch tape
• duct tape (1 roll, 20 yds, was enough)
• sharp scissors (The sharp part matters.)
• velcro with the sticky-tape on the back.
• embellishments

 

Wrapping the plastic: Wrap the plastic bag around the cast, as neatly as you can.   Leave a few inches up over the top of the cast.  We'll fold those down after we wrap it the first time.  Fold things neatly around the toe - use your best gift wrapping skills.  Use scotch tape to fasten things down easily as you wrap.We only had to scotch tape in three places:  around the calf, at the ankle and over the toes.  

Taping: Start at the top of the cast, not at the top of the plastic, and duct tape the plastic around the cast.  You will leave a few inches of plastic sticking out the top for now.  You can tape as snugly as you want.  The tricky part is lifting the leg carefully as you go under, so you don't hurt the kid.  Go slowly so the tape doesn't fold in on itself.  Also watch that the white sticky backing doesn't fold over to the outside. 

Here's the plastic sticking out over the top of the boot.

Ta-Da!  The first layer is done.   Now you want to fold the top plastic down over the tape on the outside of the boot.  This will give you a neat edge and the black plastic is a bit softer on the skin than the tape would be.  Now starting at near the top again, you can tape over the plastic you just folded down and then do a second layer of taping to make things look neater if you like.  (We did.)

Here's pic of the top after we folded it down and taped the second layer.

All done taping!

Cutting: With sharp scissors, start at the top of the boot and cut straight down the center of the boot - avoiding the cotton at the top of the cast and avoiding your fingers, etc.  

Cut all the way down to about the center of the foot.  Take the boot off to see if it will come off easily.   Then put it back on for the next few steps.   Note:  Tell the person in the cast to pull the boot over the cast, not try to shove the cast (foot) into the boot like they normally would.   Shoving hurts.

The plastic will start shifting a bit as you cut.   The edge will look ruffly from the layers of plastic.

Seal the edges so they won't ruffle by pulling out a long section of tape and attaching one edge of it to the outside of the boot, then folding it to the inside over the cut edge.

Now, take the boot off and find those places inside where the plastic layers are overlapping.  The photo shows what I'm talking about.   Tape those down so they won't shift and bunch when you're putting the boot on and off.

Flap:  Put the boot back on and try to hold the edges together.   They won't come all the way back, so we're going to put a flap on one side of the cut so that it overlaps the other side and closes well.

We took long strips and attached the edges from the bottom of the cut all the way to the top of the boot.  Cut it just above the boot and fold that end down over the top so the edge looks neat.  Then fold the tape in half over on itself, sticky side in - carefully so no sticky white stuff shows.  Now you have a little flap.   We did that three times for a 2 inch wide flap.  See photo below for what the finished flap looks like.   

  
Velcro: We used the velcro we had in the house - that's why it doesn't match.  Put the soft 'loop' stuff on the non-flap side of the cut and make sure the tape is secure (That's the long black stuff in the photo).   Put the 'hook' stuff down right on top of the soft stuff, tape side up (That's the beige squares in the photo).  Then fold the flap down on top of everything, the way it feels comfortable.   The tape on the 'hooks' will stick to the flap on the boot and when you pull the flap apart, everything will be in place.

Voila!  You have a boot for your cast.