resourcefulness

One of the things I really love about knitting is that it seems to develop a new ability of my brain – that of resourcefulness. I have already written about my makeshift sponge-armchair-turned-blocking-board. This week, however, I was faced with baby shoes in need of blocking, and since they were pretty shapeless when they came off the needles, I needed something to give them the right shape – flat blocking just wasn’t gonna cut it! So I thought about what I had at hand, and came up with this! I was so proud of myself for my silly little idea that I decided to share it with you, so here is my first ever DIY tutorial for blocking baby shoes!

You will need:

• two socks (size will depend on the desired size of baby shoes)
• one plastic freezer bag
• some scotch tape

Before I continue I must add no socks were harmed in the making of this tutorial! And yes, all my socks are this silly.

Now, the first thing you want to do is roll up the sock. This is an almost automatic movement for me because it’s how my mom has always stored socks, but in case you’re not so familiar with the technique, here are the steps. First, roll, making sure the heel part is on the inside of the roll.

Then, turn inside of cuff out.

Don’t pull it too far so that you get some sort of solid shape, resembling this.

Now, put the sock inside the plastic bag (I used one plastic bag and cut it in half, because the rolled up sock is really small, and that way you really don’t waste much!). Wrap it all up!

Secure the little wrap with scotch tape.

It’s gonna look something like this. You can play around with some more tape to smooth out the edges and make them rounder, to resemble the shape of a baby shoe better. Since the sock is soft material, this is really easy to do.

Insert into knit up baby shoe!

Because the sock is made of fabric, you can actually stick pins in it as well, in case you want to make sure lacey parts spread out the right way or you just want to secure certain parts of it.

And voila, after it dries, this is what you get!

A perfectly shaped baby shoe! I’m very happy about the shape of the front and the perfect roundness of the heel. Trust me, before this process it wouldn’t even stand up on its own.

I hope this little tutorial may come in handy to you some day! I would also love to hear how you block baby shoes… Perhaps there is a much easier way that I missed, my brain tends to ignore obvious things sometimes… ;)

p.s. After you’re done, simply remove the socks from plastic and you can wear them again, no need even to wash them! (Mine remained completely dry despite being wrapped in wet wool, the plastic bag protected them perfectly! :)

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