Mend a Sock Hole with an Old T-Shirt

The headline kind of gives away the whole thing on this one, but let’s talk about how to mend a sock hole with an old T-shirt and why you might want to.

Never-Ending Mending

I’ve written about these socks before in my post on how to darn a sock, which focused chiefly on sock toes.

In the more than a year since I wrote that post, the toes have continued to need attention annually, and a few of the heels have blown out, too. And I’ve mending some of them with thread before, but this one in particular had thinned out to the point I wasn’t sure I could even do that if I wanted to.

I still haven’t tossed them because they’re fine socks otherwise, and it gives me an opportunity to experiment with different ways to mend a sock hole.

Reinforcing > Mending

While I say this is about how to mend a sock hole, I’m not really that interested in traditional methods of darning or invisible (or less visible) mending to make my socks wearable again.

I want a fast, easy, approachable method that people who aren’t experienced knitters or stitchers can do that will keep them from having to throw their otherwise perfectly good socks away. Because no one needs to be buying new socks right now.

I happened to have a little bit of an old T-shirt sitting on my desk — part of which might have been used to make yarn in the past, part of which became a belt for a Gridiron costume, and a little of which went into some new ties for my patchwork duvet cover — so I wondered if I could use a patch to reinforce the thin/disappeared area on the heel of my sock.

Materials

All you need for this is a little bit of an old T-shirt and sewing supplies. You can use a sewing machine with coordinating or contrasting thread as you like, or you can sew this by hand. I did a little bit of both for the mend a sock hole projects shown here.

You’ll also need scissors for cutting thread and T-shirt, and a few straight pins or safety pins can be helpful.

How to Mend a Sock Hole with a T-shirt Patch

Cut out a piece of T-shirt that’s bigger than the hole/holes you want to patch/reinforce.

Pin it in place with the shirt patch on the inside of the sock.

Use your sewing machine to sew a bunch of lines of stitching on top of the patch and over the edges of the patch onto the sock. The easiest way to do this is to stitch one line, stop, crank the needle so it’s down in the fabric, lift the presser foot and turn the sock, bring the foot back down and sew in another direction.

This is a lot like what I did when I was mending holes in a sheet, only they were small enough I didn’t also need a patch.

You can also just do this by hand, which is mostly what I did on this second sock. Using running stitches that go off the sides of the patch, work rows of stitching across the patch, then up and down, too.

Whichever way you do your main stitching, when you’re happy with it, turn the sock inside out if it’s not already there.

Trim any excess from the T-shirt patch and then sew around the edges of the patch to keep it in place even more and make it smoother on your foot (though I can’t actually feel it when I wear them).

This patch should help reinforce the fabric around it and it won’t wear as quickly as stitching alone. And because you used T-shirt material the socks can still be washed in the same way they were before.

This easy way to mend a sock hole isn’t something you’ll need to do often but it keeps your socks in rotation if you’ve blown out a heel. This would also work if you have a worn spot on the foot of a sock, though you might be able to feel the patch more there.