The Sock Pillow

I was hired to create a pillow out of socks. My client said she wanted to do something for her father, who was well-known for his many-colored socks, but no longer needed them. She thought a pillow might be a good way to use them, with the ultimate goal of giving the pillow to her father to continue to enjoy his socks.

We met, and we went through the socks that she had, picking out the ones that were special to her and her father.

I chose to use the leg part of the sock, as that was the part of the sock that had the most usable fabric for me, and would best be able to represent the patterns and colors on the socks. The binding at the top is tighter than the leg part of the sock, and the heel piece won't lay flat. In addition, the part of the sock that goes around the arch of your foot is pretty short and small when not being stretched by your foot.

First I measured all the socks, laying flat, and decided on a couple different sizes of blocks to create (using the measurements of the pillow form to ensure that it would all match up correctly. I then made three different pattern pieces for each different block size, and started cutting the socks up. Some laid flat wider, and I was able to get four blocks out of the pair of socks, others were tighter and laid flat narrower, and so I had to cut them open to create a block wide enough, resulting in two blocks for the pair of socks.

Once the blocks were all cut, it was just a matter of putting them all together, first in columns, and then organizing the columns so that two of the same sock didn't end up exactly next to each other. I did end up with a couple that matched around the edges, but it was more important to me to make sure that when a side of the pillow was laid flat, that none on that side matched up.

After both sides were sewn together around the edges, I attached the top corners of the pillow form to the top corners of the sock-pillow case to keep it from moving around too much inside. I then turned the casing right side out around the pillow form, and hand-stitched the gap in the bottom closed.

My client was very happy with the final product, and I was very happy to have had this project to work on! It provided a couple new challenges for me, sewing-wise, and gave me an opportunity to do something different from what I have been doing recently, and what I have done in the past.