ball band washrags

White socks don't lend themselves well to cute items (since they tend to be pretty grungy by the time they're ready for reuse). And I need dish rags. Ah, isn't it great when things work out.


To begin my dish cloth from socks experiment I did a quick search for some inspiration.

Drew made this totally cute dish cloth using a bleach pen to write on a knitted rag.

This won't work for a sewing project, but I might do something like this with tapestry crochet. No bleach pens for this green girl ;-)







These ball band washrags (I think that's the correct pattern name) were made by Nicole.

This design should incorporate socks well.











From the pile of ends and odds, I pulled out the sock cuffs. Trust me, this will end with a dish cloth ;-)

I cut them open...









...to make nice narrow strips.










I did a quick a dirty zig-zag stitch to sew the cuff strips into rope. I also cut strips out of white socks and sewed those into rope.

I crocheted a lattice (which is essentially a square of plain fillet crochet) to weave the sock rope through.

In this version, I wove two strands through alternating rows. I ended by weaving one piece into the side of the lattice (not an actual hole in the lattice) so that it would connect to the second piece without having to go around the side. I sewed the ends together.


In this version I wove the rope through the side of the lattice at the end of every row. (I did this to maintain the brick pattern).

Summary: This is a quick project. It took maybe an hour to crochet the lattice while I was watching TV (aka distracted) and at most another hour to construct the sock rope and weave it into the lattice. The second rag took 14 women's sock cuffs.