Making my First Sock Monkey

October 18th, 2007, later.

I have purchased from www.foxsox.com a half dozen Rockford Red Heel pair of socks. Included with each pair are the instructions to make sock monkey dolls. I took two days off work, as my kids are off school for MEA. So, with excitement and trepidation, I begin. First, the sewing station. An ugly plastic table cloth goes over the game table in the library (think boxy, small living room converted by built-in book shelves from Home Depot into book-worm’s dream). Sewing machine (yes, of college fame) is located in cobwebby part of the basement and dragged upstairs. A dusting cloth is put to good use. Sewing box is retrieved (was my grandmother’s, who died in the seventies) and memory slowly works to remember what the different parts are for.

I pull out the instructions that come with the sock. I need 1 pair Rockford Red Heel socks (check), stuffing (one more trip down to cobwebby basement finds an open bag, last-used, no doubt when Oliver North was in the news), and Red Knitting Yarn (??) I don’t have this, but, studying diagram, do not think it will be relevant to a basic doll.

Pleasant surprise: 10-year-old son is really interested in making a sock monkey with me! It’s raining out, and a cozy day seems to be unfolding!

Being the analytical person I am (note how the first four letters in that word are “anal”), I study the instructions carefully, as well as the socks themselves. 10-year-old son becomes a bit bored at this point and leaves to play video games with his twin brother.

I take a deep breath, and tell myself “I can do this. I can do this”, and plunge in. I use a pink highlighter to mark where I want to do my seam, and I am off! (Problem: needle won’t go up and down, despite my checking and re-checking the bobbin and threading instructions. Epiphany occurs when I find an “oiling” section under sewing machine instructions. “If machine has not been used in a long time, oil all moving parts” (plus handy diagram) “Use high-quality sewing machine oil only”. NOTE: husband’s electric razor oil works just fine!)

And we’re off again! Two seams for legs go fast! I am feeling empowered! In admiring my handiwork, I notice that I had the sock upside down. 10-year-old son comes back upstairs to check on me at this point, and shows great sympathy over my mistake. I deliver some parental-propaganda about “mistakes ok; we learn from our mistakes; mistakes take us down paths we wouldn’t have otherwise discovered, blah, blah blah” Oddly, this propaganda becomes true later when cast-aside torso later becomes sock monkey doll number 2 – “Freak” (Or Costello, as I like to call him, in reference to the Elvis Costello song from the eighties, ‘Accidents Will Happen’). Freak has a very long torso and short legs, and a very tall, white forehead, but he’s kind of Rock ‘N Roll, and we like him.

A new sock, and legs are resewn and cut. Within minutes, my son and I are stuffing him, per the instructions, via the crotch area. 10-year-old Son remarks, “you know, if you were thinking about private parts and stuff, this could be kind of gross”.

Both son and I are very impressed to have a legged-monkey-torso within 5 minutes of beginning sewing!

The work involving the second sock (arms, tail, mouth and ears) goes more slowly than the torso. The instructions provide no details about finishing or attaching body parts. I’m sure this is no problem for a skilled seamstress, but, for me, it provides some challenges. Here is what I did:

After stuffing each individual piece, I turned the hole area fabric under to complete the seam, and then used my machine to stitch it shut. This was quick and easy, and looks alright, in my book, but I’ll try later attaching arms and tails with unseamed openings, and see if that rounded look makes a big difference. Also, next trip down to Fox River, I’ll look at the details of the sock monkey dolls there and see what they did, and report back.
For attaching, I just hand-stitched the pieces on both sides. Due to the knitted construction of the sock, the stitches just disappear, which is pretty cool. I used white thread on my first monkey, and that was just fine. But I made a note to buy an off-white that matches the creamy yarn of the sock, for future monkeys. Also, this hand-stitching has held up under some rough play, which you’ll hear about later.
On the ears, I seamed the two sides of each together and put a very small amount of stuffing in. I then turned that seam under and seamed on the outside just an 1/8 inch or so from the outside to make a semi-circle. This seemed to give an ear-like aura to the things, which I liked.
The face part requires the most labor. I tried to turn under the edges a little and then pin it on to the torso, before hand-stitching. The sock edges curl up a lot where cut, and this gets frustrating. However, once stitched on, with an opening left, the stuffing goes in easily, and the hole is also stitched up quite easily. Please note that where you place the mouth truly determines the character of the sock monkey face. So put your creative hat on during that portion. Also, the ear shapes and placement work closely together with the mouth placement in determining the look of the monkey.
The directions state “the mouth can be improved by a running stitch of either black or white across the middle of the lips”. This is true. I ran out and bought some embroidery yarn/thread. Since I don’t embroider, I just tried stitching in a way similar to drawing (which I know a bit more about that stitching). While I did this, I thought, “next one I’ll do the embroidery BEFORE I stitch it to the torso, so I have access to both sides”. However, stitching after it is completed makes a nice, 3-D affect as it draws the fabric in at the stitch and gives the appearance of an upper and lower lip.
I used tacky glue to glue on Wiggle Eyes ™ . (I bought a package of 56 20MM). I got all my accessories at Michael’s, but I notice the Wiggle Eyes list a website on their packaging: www.westsrimcrafts.com I went there, and you can’t order online, but they have online catalogs. NOTE TO SELF: do some online searching later for where/at what cost you can buy the materials required. Tacky glue works pretty well, if you gob it on. However, I have boys, and they are very physical with their toys. Be the end of this day, we had already replaced an eye twice. I am searching for a sew-on moving eye, but have not found one yet.
And lastly, the miscellaneous facial embroidery. I used Freak’s torso to experiment with embroidery. I really think the monkey face benefits from eyebrows, but my boys feel differently. The instructions note that, for very young children, embroider the eyes (presumably to avoid a choking hazard). I plan to make some future monkeys for some small nieces and nephews, so I will give that a try down the road. What I want to try is to use embroidery stitches to make a sketched-looking realistic eye (I love drawing eyes!). If I successfully do this, I will post a pattern for it in this blog, so you can embroider the eyes, even if you don’t draw. I find, during embroidery, that the disappearing stitches that I loved when stitching on parts, are really disconcerting when trying to embroider. I chose an embroidery thread that looked about the right thickness to me. “5” seems to be the measure, but the packaging doesn’t say much. “Cotton Perle” is also on there.
Unique touches: My 10-year-old wanted a football-playing monkey. So, I cut out two pieces of a football-like shape from brown felt. Then, I embroidered the white football stitches on it. We finished it with an embroidered “MFL”, for the monkey football league. The monkey’s hand got a stick-on Velcro circle and the football got the matching circle.

This first finished monkey was a great success! (and this is to twin 10-year-old boys, so I can’t imagine the excitement of a younger, possibly female audience) A game was promptly developed which involved (among other, full-contact aspects) swinging the monkey’s arm back and flinging it so that the ball left the Velcro and went flying, starting the play. At bedtime, the monkey (now christened Bananas) was put to bed on the upper bunk with his own blanket and pillow.

One comment my son made earlier was “I like him because he smells like your hand lotion”. Because I lotion my hands every time after I wash them, and because the monkey-making went on in between meal-prep, cleanup, laundry and the usual assorted domestic chores (and I applied a lot of lotion), my lotion got worked into the yarns of the sock while I worked the pieces. It also occurs to me that, for my sons, the monkey had been imbued with the fun of working together on something, the choices/designing they got to do, and my stories to them about the history of sock monkeys (the little I know). So, in that monkey, there is scent and love and little memories. Pretty cool, huh?

To close out the day’s entry, I should note that Freak, at the end of the day, is still a torso-only with one poorly-embroidered arched eyebrow.

My Sock Monkey Crafting Journey Begins

October 18, 2007

I have decided my next adventure will be learning how to make Sock Monkey Dolls and, hopefully, discover during the process what exactly it is that has kept this unique American craft alive for nearly a century.

My credentials. In terms of crafting, nearly zero. I had one quarter of a 7th grade home ec class devoted to sewing, in which I produced a somewhat lop-sided elephant made of some god-awful seventies-fabric that must have been on sale at the outlet store. Also, I had a roommate in college that made her own clothes (beautifully) that tried to teach me to sew. I bought a sewing machine, a bunch of fabric and several patterns. (The fever of purchasing supplies!) Alas, nothing resulted in anything really wearable, and the box of material and unused fabric was sold 15 years later at a garage sale for two bucks.

My sock monkey credentials are somewhat better. I am an I.T. consultant who does a lot of work for Fox River Mills in Osage Iowa, the manufacturer of the Rockford Red Heel sock, used for over 100 years in making sock monkey dolls. Of course, none of my work has to do with the sock monkey. But, by osmosis, I’ve picked up something from all the sock monkey dolls that adorn the plant offices, the bins of socks I walk by on the plant floor, and the material we publish to the web site (now we’re getting on my turf!)

I am prone to the reflective, and this tendency is further reinforced by the periodic 2 ½ hour trip I make from my home in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, to the Fox River plant in Osage Iowa. This trip involves a lot of time on long stretches of Interstate 35, and then winding through the small towns and farm country of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. Beautiful sunrises over wide stretches of corn fields, punctuated with prosperous-looking red barns, and the seasonal smell of manure fertilizing the rich soil evoke both thought and emotion (especially under the influence of some strong gas-station coffee).

(I am also prone to rambling, but let me get myself in check here). The connection here is that it has occurred to me that there is something about the sock monkey doll and the people who make them that is distinctly American. It is something to do with the innovation of early pioneer mothers making toys for their children out of the socks their husbands wore in which to do their hard work. It is also something to do with using the resources at hand, and not wasting. And it is also something to do with simplicity vs. high-tech. I see parallels with this and the Fox River Mills business itself. This is an American manufacturer, a family-owned and run business. Fox River has always chosen to keep their plant in the U.S., to conserve and recycle in their manufacturing processes, and to continue to innovate in their sock designs, rather than finding ways to produce cheap, low-quality socks in bulk and maximize profits. And to this day, they have flourished with this philosophy. However, there is enormous pressure within the industry to abandon this philosophy, as American manufacturers choose to outsource to countries with cheap labor, and no green laws. It makes it really hard for a company of Fox River’s philosophy to stay in business. My thought is that somehow the fate of the sock monkey doll and Fox River Mills, as an American, heartland manufacturer, are intertwined and similar.

I don’t know what the answers are, but I’m thinking that embarking on this fun, crafty adventure will somehow reveal it to me.

And, on a lighter note, here we go!