Sock Critters

Although my current passion is for quilting, every once in awhile, I do take on something different artistically. I garden, even do a little scrap booking, and I still teach here in town. It seems like a good idea for me to have several past times. Its a matter of staying healthy at various levels that include the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. (PEMS)

I have a pair of cotton sox that were pricey and when they got holes in the heel, it was devastating. I don't darn and never had luck wearing darned sox. Pinterest has a lot of ideas for re-purposing them into critters.

So I started with one yesterday, and from the ideas I saw, I could make two little critters...odd ones of course. Cutting into them was hard. Why ever it was, it didn't take too long before I made two cuts that separated the front from the back.

The next step was stitch around the edge to hold the cut threads and then to stuff the toe with leftover batting. The batting has been sitting in  one of my closets for some time just waiting for a non-quilting project to appear. 

There was a time in my life that I would take such holes to Mother to darn. And she did such fine work on them! However, my feet, used to being bare, could not tolerate extra stitches, & in fact, to this day, I wear sox & shoes, taking them off inside.

The two parts were stuffed and the openings stitched closed. The final step to making one of these critters is to stitch them in ways that make them cute and critter-like. Well, after several attempts at following the guides set up for me on the links I found, I decided to hold off on them and do something I do know how to do. Looking back at these photos, I think I will cut apart the longer half (the one with the stripes on the top) and make them into legs to fit on the shorter one. Cutting got easier after seeing that the whole process would work. Cutting. Now there is a metaphor for what we need to remove or change in our lives.

However, I pulled out Patrick's quilt and finished the binding on it. I am very pleased with how it looks and will need to lay it flat and take one more look at it for loose threads and any errant issues that might have been missed before. Some quilters might call this an "Eye Spy" quilt because of the small little details such as the cowboy on the bucking horse, the little snow person, and the little holiday girl.  It is that and more. I haven't counted how many blocks were made with 16 of those 2.5" squares, but there is a lot of interest in each one.