SOCKS Project

Children from Surrey Square Primary School with their mended socks, 2024

Surrey Square Primary School: SOCK Mending Project

“It was easy because it was fun”

The aim of the SOCK Mending Project was to teach a whole school community how to make a woven darn – a practical skill for mending socks. To see what different stitches and marks would look like, from children at nursery age to Year 6 students. To represent the community in the collection of socks they stitched and practised their darns on.

We sourced our socks from J.A. Swift, a family run sock factory, in Hathern, Leicestershire – founded in 1895 and now run by the fourth generation of the Swift family. The socks we used for the project were ‘warehouse waste’ socks.

Each sock had a small imperfection meaning it couldn’t be sold.  Nonetheless, these were very good socks and perfect for the children to practise their darns on – and, essentially, to make ‘samplers’.

Between April and July 2024, we ran 26 darning sessions at Surrey Square. All were practical sessions. The starting idea was to get every student, plus members of staff, parents, and carers, in the school to practise a woven darn stitch. It quickly became apparent, however, that we’d need to modify this plan.

We had to take time to demonstrate parts of the needle, how to thread it, how to measure a length of thread and then how to do a running stitch. Teaching is, of course, dynamic and the teacher must respond to their students.

Each year group and each class responded differently to the session. Some had previous experience of sewing and some had none. All the children stitched. All had ideas about how long it might take to repair something, how items became damaged and why you might care to repair your clothes. We’d discuss many of these ideas at the beginning of the workshops.

Once stitching began, working in the three dimensions of the sock was a challenge. Learning how to sew on curved sections was difficult, likewise sewing inside the sock where you cannot see the needle.

Some children were thrilled that they could change the shape of their sock by making a row of stitches and then pulling tightly and gathering the whole sock up into a ball. Some loved playing with colour and making choices based on the texture of the yarns. All very important decisions!

Mostly, the children would – just go for it! They persevered when threads got tangled or wefts were doubled. The stitches were like ‘mark making’ on a sheet of paper or a canvas. Long and looping. Moving from one end of the sock to the other. Changing the shape of the sock – so it was jaunty or had character, toes pleasingly pointing up towards the ankle or the cuff ruched louchely.

The students would ply colours and yarns together to make an extra fat ‘rainbow‘ wool that would be their thread. They would try to get as much colour into the sock as possible. Or they’d carefully weave their warps. Creatively making their own decisions about colour and yarn and thinking through the process of ‘making’. The goal of the sessions was to embrace creativity and learn something practical – and then see what happened.

One child said: “This is my best day ever. I love sewing.” Another, “Grandma sews too. I like to do what Grandma does.” And one more, “It was easy because it was fun.” And one more, “It was quite hard and quite easy. The first try I didn’t know how to do it that much, but the second and third tries I knew how to do it.”

The marks the children and adults made in their stitching excite me – I love their freedom.

Top darning tip from Lucas at Surrey Square: “Take your time, stay relaxed.”