Attaching Rubber Soles to a Spandex Costume

DIY #costuming tutorial: attaching soles to a spandex #costume. If your #cosplay has spandex feet (like #SpiderMan), you can attach rubber soles to the bottom of the feet to make it easier to walk and protect the spandex costume itself.

Bear in mind that once you attach soles to the bottom of your spandex costume, you won’t be able to remove them without damaging the spandex, so you want to be careful how you do it.

At a minimum, the supplies that you’ll need to attach soles are as follows:

• A pair of rubber-soled boat shoes.
• Fabric scissors.
• Shoe-goo (or similar glue, such as E6000, Super Glue, hot glue, Gorilla Glue)
• A box cutter or exact-o-knife.

Basic instructions:

1. Using the fabric scissors, carefully cut the uppers of the boat shoes from the rubber soles.
2. Save the insoles from the boat shoes: you will need these later.
3. Using the box cutter or exact-o-knife, carefully cut a number of lines into the top side of the rubber soles (the side that your foot will be on). Be careful not to cut all the way through to the bottom of the sole. The cut lines will help the glue to adhere to sole.
4. Apply glue to the top side of one of the rubber soles (left or right) and spread it around.
5. Insert the insole from the boat shoes (that you saved earlier) into the foot of your spandex costume that matches the rubber sole that you applied the glue to.
6. Insert your feet into the spandex costume legs. Make sure that the insole is where you want it to be and that there aren’t any unwanted wrinkles or folds in the spandex fabric.
7. Place the rubber sole onto the floor and carefully step onto it with the matching foot that has the insole inside and apply equal pressure to help bond the fabric, insole and rubber sole together. Be careful not to get the glue onto your skin.
8. After you have waited for a while, you can try to carefully slide your foot out of the spandex costume. Place some wadded up paper into the foot and then press something heavy on top of it, like a sack of rice. You could also wrap some rubber bands around the rubber sole and top of the spandex of the foot. This will permit you to walk around while giving the glue more time to set. We recommend 24 hours.
9. Go back to step 4 and repeat the process with the other foot. You can try starting the other foot before the 1st one is finished, but this ensures that each one will be done well.

This tutorial video by “asleeplessvision” also shows this process. There are multiple, similar “how-to” videos like this on YouTube that you can also reference: