Baby Socks

At my house there’s a new motivation to clean the sewing room!

The reason can be expressed in the following three words: “It’s a girl!”Yes, Kate and Carlos had a girl! So I am now in “sewing heaven” with all the baby ideas I have found on Pinterest. Fortunately I have no shortage of materials to work with. And, thanks to a couple of “baby sock reconnaissance missions” to various stores, I have no shortage of those, either!(Truth in blogging #1: This isn’t even all of them.) How did I end up with so many baby socks? Well, it all started when Kate mentioned that it was hard to find baby socks with lace on them in the smaller sizes. Immediately I thought, “I can do that!”…Or could I?I always love those pictures you see on craft blogs where they show you the sewing machine with the item in progress. Now was my chance to have my very own “how-to” pictures! (Have I mentioned that many of these projects are a lot harder than they look?)Just let me say at this point that you have to stretch the socks as you sew on the lace, or else the sock will lose its stretch and you can’t put it on the baby. I found this out by reading several online tutorials on the subject. (Be advised, this step can prove difficult, especially if you are trying to take iPhone photos as you work!) You sew the lace facing up, onto the outer edge of the cuff so when you fold it down, you don’t see the actual seam. At the top right you can see the first “fail”, where the lace is sewn onto the wrong side of the cuff. The photo at the bottom right shows how it finally turned out A couple of decorative bows, and, voila!Not bad for a beginner, I guess. I won’t lie and say it didn’t occur to me that babies probably shouldn’t have beads on their socks, because, well…what if they try to put them in their mouth…so I sewed them on extra tightly. Since I’d had some difficulty finding white baby socks, I ended up buying several (packs) of them in an quite array of colors. I thought it would be fun to make casual socks look a little more dressy with colored lace. Above you can see the “casual sock fail”. It’s too hard to explain so I’ll let the picture speak for itself. Then it struck me! It would be easier to sew the lace on by hand. But I would still have to stretch the sock, and how could I do that while holding a needle? The answer was simple. Stretch the sock around something, in this case a plastic container that used to hold safety pins. It worked great! Still haven’t done the second one. (Did I mention these projects are usually harder than they look?)