Taking on another reader request today: a tutorial on lace sock toppers! This is another of the ones where I lost the name of the person requesting it when I moved emails so if it was you let me know and I’ll update!

So yes there was a period in my life when I wouldn’t have been caught dead without frilly socks. At that point they were pretty hard to come by here in Aus so I made my own sock toppers to go over plain knee high school socks. These days I don’t wear them anymore because I no longer wear Lolita and prefer stockings to socks but there’s no reason why I can show you guys how I used to make them! I get a lot of requests for Lolita themed tutorials but I’m always wary of doing them because it’s no longer my area of expertise ^_^

There are two basic designs I used to use to make these, today I’ll show you the first which is completely adjustable and tied on with ribbon.

What you need for ribbon and lace sock toppers:

Eyelet lace
Thick lace for ruffling OR several smaller laces
Needle and thread
Ribbon
Scissors
Bobby pin

Now normally for this kind of thing you would use a lace which is as thick as you want the end result to be tall but I didn’t have any on hand so instead I am making this using several thinner laces which I will stitch together to form a thick piece. Obviously you can skip this if you already have thick lace. Also I am using a mixture of cotton and nylon lace, if you want a quality result don’t use nylon because 90% of the time it ends up looking cheap. Again I didn’t want to buy new supplies for something I might not use at the end so I’m sure you can just get the general idea from this and then choose your own materials!

So you need to measure around the top of your calf and cut lengths of lace which are twice that measurement. Below are the pieces I am using for 1 topper: eyelet, two nylon and one cotton to edge it.

This is the order they will be stitched together.

The first thing to do is stitch the 3 bottom pieces together so it combines to make the large piece of lace.

Overlap them slightly and use a basic running stitch to hold the two middle pieces together.

This is the result:

Then do the same with the bottom edging.

And you’ve got something like this:

This is where you come in if you already have thicker lace.

Lay the eyelet lace over the top…

And stitch that in place too!

Fold the ends under and stitch them in place as well.

And we’re almost finished! What you should have at this point is a long rectangle of lace with no raw edges.

Now to thread the ribbon through!

I picked a light pink ribbon so it stands out but not too much.

Thread the ribbon through the entire length of eyelet lace.

It can be a pain to do a lot of threading without something to push it through, only problem is that the eyelet lace is a bit small to thread a safety pin through as you would usually do. So my solution is to tie the ribbon to a bobby pin.

And push it through all of the holes!

Don’t skimp on the ribbon, you need to leave enough that it can be easily tied around your leg with enough for a pretty bow. Keep the ribbon flat so it’s not twisted at all.

Pull the ribbon, gather all of the lace together and tie the ends together in a bow!

Cuuuute!

This style with the ribbons is good too because you can tighten/loosen it enough to use them as wrist cuffs, hair accessories or anything you like. Yay for versatility. You know now that I think about it more I’ll probably use them as hair accessories haha!