Mending Socks

This post is in honor of a wonderful man I'll call Grandpa L. Though it's been over a decade since he passed out of this world, I still think about Grandpa L. occasionally and am grateful for the many life lessons I learned from him. Like if you feel like having donuts or pie for dinner once in a while, don't worry about whether it's bad for you, just enjoy it! Another lesson I learned is that you can mend your socks. This may be a big "duh" to most people, but I actually had no idea this was possible until one day while I was visiting, Grandpa L noticed a hole in one of mine. The next morning I found the sock outside the bedroom door, with no hole in sight.

Grandpa L was skilled in the ancient art of darning, which I confess that to this day, I have never bothered to learn, though the results are quite amazing. With my eldest daughter's affinity for all things commercial, quality clothing is not something we've been able to invest in and I don't consider it a good use of my time to spend an hour darning a sock from Target's dollar aisle. However, that sock is actually worth much more than $1 to her, and in truth, to me as well - by the time we calculate replacement cost (i.e. the inevitable $200 I will spend at Target if I go to replace said sock) and the ecological cost (heavily sprayed cotton to produce the cheap yarn, toxic dyes, the container trip from China, etc.)

These $1 socks would have about a 3 month lifespan in our household if we just tossed them once the holes appeared.

So in short, since acquiring children (and a sewing machine) I have felt it worthwhile to mend many a sock, albeit in my own shortcut, non-skilled way. This easy technique works well for tights and the reinforced toes of nylon stockings as well.

You are going to need a sewing machine, and you are going to need to know how to thread it. Many of us are not quite there yet, and that's fine. When you do get there, one day you'll wake up to a holey sock and perhaps you'll remember that it can be fixed without too much trouble. It won't matter that I'll have long since stopped blogging and retired to my farm out in the country, because you won't even need my instructions. It's that easy.

Get the sewing machine ready with a coordinating thread top and bottom. Take the sock and turn it inside out. Wherever the hole is (usually the toes, but occasionally the heel is the culprit), pinch the sock together with both thumbs and forefingers so that the hole is effectively "closed" between your fingers. This is the area you are going to sew. Insert a straightpin parallel to where the stitch will be.

Turn your sewing machine's stitch to zig-zag and reduce the stitch length setting so that the stitches will be closer together (double-check your manual if you're unsure about where the stitch length dial resides). Test your stitch on another piece of fabric before sewing your sock.

Once you've got your sock set up on the machine (you may need to move the pin away from the sewing site a bit, as I've done), you'll want to sew the length of the hole, plus a little before and after it. Make sure to backstitch, as these socks do take a lot of wear! When you're finished, you'll have a stitch that looks something like this:

A simple matter of trimming the threads, resetting the dials and putting away your machine (or moving on to the next holey sock in the pile), and you've got a very rewarding outcome for your (fairly minimal) efforts. Just think how happy your little (or big) one will be to discover that Hello Kitty or Bob the Builder is back in the sock rotation! Great job. Now go get yourself a donut. :-)