C is for Sock

In the middle of my weekly ritual of purifying the clearance racks at Michael's of any bargain finds, I happened open some cute little letter patches. Impulsively, I snatched up as many red "C's" as I could find. Six, in all, for fifty cents each.


Eager to find something to put all the "C's" on, I thought I might get some socks. Heartened by the promise of a big bag of Sunchips, Sak drove me to Target to get some black socks. I picked up some for our brothers, as well.


Next, the simple task of ironing on the "C" patches! (All the guys happen to have names that start with "C", interestingly enough.)


Except...the adhesive didn't work at all! Either the patch-glue was too old, the socks were too odd of a material, or some combination of the two - but it just wasn't working.

I tried some fabric glue, and although it seemed to work, the patch would still rip off if given a big enough stretch. I gave up at this point, the guys could just have plain black socks, no problem. It really wasn't a project worth spending a ton of time on.

But the socks snuck off to my grandmother's when I wasn't looking, and she decided to take care of the problem in true-sewing-fashion. I can see her shaking her head at me. Between my veil mess and this, she must think I'm crazy. You know, if the costumes I bring to her every year for advice didn't do so already.


Now, I did try and sew these myself. I promise! But I couldn't fit the sock under the foot! She removed part of the base of the machine in order to get it to fit better, which was a really smart idea! I also couldn't hand-sew the C either, though I tried. The adhesive on the patch was really tough to push the needle through.


Anyway, she knocked them out in no time and they are all complete now, minus the leftover glue marks on some of them from my fail-attempt. I was pretty surprised when my mother brought the pictures and finished socks over!

I know it's just another little detail that no one will see, but I like that my grandmother was able to get involved, and I learned how to manipulate the machine in order to sew things onto socks! Plus, the guys will be able to tell their socks apart from other random black socks in the future! Or something. But yes, next time I'll stick to only ironing things onto cotton materials, and not crazy spandex dress socks.

What have you monogrammed so far? Or maybe - what haven't you monogrammed?