Socks For Your Hands

A practical way to recycle old socks...

By the time either I or my hubby decides to part ways with a pair of socks, they have holes in them. And while I recently watched one of my favourite YouTubers demonstrate the art of darning socks, it's not something that I can see myself doing on a regular basis... if at all.  

From a crafting point of view, however, there's not a whole lot that one can do with socks in that condition. If you've ever seen a sock puppet, doll or snowman idea, wouldn't you agree that they always look like they were made with new socks?

In our home, discarded socks would usually be tossed into a bag for future use as rags. Hubby is always polishing something or other and old socks are often good for that. From a crafting perspective, I suppose they'd be useful for stuffing plushies if you cut them up into small pieces.

But in my case here, I had a couple of pairs that the other half bought for me years ago because they were adorned with certain black and white flightless seabirds, for which I have an affinity. Despite being no longer wearable as socks, I was reluctant to let go of them.

Socks about to get a new life...

Then I had a thought: how about turning them into hand warmers or quasi fingerless gloves?

I tell ya, it's a quick project with a solid return. And if you have socks that are similarly decorated, the result can even be a fashion statement of sorts!

 

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The project is as simple as can be.

Just take your old pair of socks, stack them up and slice them off right before the damaged area. (In this case here, both the toes and the heels had holes in them.)

Cut away the toe to heel area...

You might notice I have a bit of an angle going on here under the ruler. How you make this cut is totally up to you. You may want to retain as much of the sock as you can at this point, just to see what your preference is regarding overall coverage for your thumb. (You can always trim it down before you sew.)

Create a division for the thumb on each sock...

On the side opposite to where the heel used to be, use a pin to create a divided space for your thumb. Try it on for size and then you can decide if you want to do some trimming.

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I have seen this project done up as fingerless gloves where the crafter has gone to the trouble of creating four additional stubby little compartments, but in my mind, I'm thinking, why bother?

Once you're satisfied with the size of the compartment that you've created for the thumb, go ahead and sew a line anywhere from 3/4" to 1.5" (roughly 2 to 4cm) in length at that location. (As indicated by the broken white lines in the photo below.) 

The only bit of sewing that you'll need to do...

The longer the sewn line, the more coverage your thumb will have.

I would highly recommend that you use whatever stretch stitch setting you have on your sewing machine for this. (And perhaps a ballpoint needle.)

And it's done!

The sock won't fray, so you don't need to do any further sewing. As a matter of fact, the top part will eventually curl a bit to create some added dimension, as you can see on the other pair that I made.

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See what I mean about simple? Can a useful project get any easier than this? This one hits all the right chords with me, especially in being a recycling effort.

Two pairs of new hand warmers!

Now I can leave a pair of these wherever I "hang"... upstairs, downstairs, and in between. I've been regularly using my minky fingerless gloves while at the computer, but I find it a bit constricting to type while wearing them, since minky doesn't really stretch a whole lot. (Those can now go in my sewing room.)

Staying warm while the fingers fly...

On the other hand, these recycled sock hand warmers enable a great range of movement at the keyboard. All in all, very happy to have kept my penguin socks out of the rag bag!

'Til next...