Every year for Christmas my mom gets me socks. Generally, boot socks, but they weren’t available this past year. In the northern upper midwest, we like our long socks for the winter months. I do, however, tend to wear holes in the heals of many of my socks. Instead of making myself throw out a perfectly good sock with just a hole in it, I have typically let it sit in a pile to fix.
My solution, however to fix the socks with holes is to eliminate the hole all together. The remainder of the socks are still like new, with a lot of stretch. These up-cycled socks with holes then become tube sox for my children. It is very difficult to find long, thick socks for children.
To make new socks
To make new socks out of your socks with holes, you need to first flip the socks inside out and hole side up.
Then, I cut with a scissors across the top of the hole. Thankfully, my holes are generally in the same spot so my socks will still be the same length. It is a must that you do this to ensure you will have two socks the same length when you are completed.
With the sock still inside out, you will run a sewing stitch across the opening of the sock where you just cut. Make sure to secure the stitches beginning and end of stitch. You could also do this by hand.
In the picture above you can see on the bottom sock what appears to be a normal sock. No one would ever know it used to be a boot length sock.
To make a multi-use mitt from a sock with a hole
To make a multi-use mitt with the remainder of the sock, just slide on to your fingers as a mitt. You can use to dust with, dip into some stain (one time use), have your children make puppets out of, wrap around a tennis ball and sew up for a dryer ball, add beans to and sew up for bean bags. The possibilities are truly endless.
When the up-cycled sock has tear
Then just cut off north of the hole, flip inside out, and fold the raw edge over and sew with a zig zag stitch and now you have leg warmers!