Freakin’ huge board sock

Didn’t happen. Plus, I’m not the tallest person in the world, so putting this on and getting it off is a pain. I had a few choices:

a) Sell the darn thing and just make my own,
b) Put in a sleeping bag plastic zipper to make the sock easier to put on, but risk some scratching of the glass, or
c) Shorten the long sock for a board I have that NEEDS a sock pronto.

I could just cut the sock short, but I don’t feel like making a new drawstring casing when a perfectly good one is on the thing already. Instead, I’m going to stitch the original casing to the shortened bottom, but I’m going to pin everything in place before I cut away the excess.
Essentially, I folded up the bottom until the casing (drawstring) met the bottom of where I wanted the sock to end. I decided to make the sock a bit longer than the 5’8″ board for two reasons- I wanted to make sure that the fins would have some room, plus, I wanted to make it a bit versatile in case I got a bit longer board, like a 5’10”.

Folded up bottom and my 5’8″ on the sock for measurement

Determining how long to make the sock, and how far to fold it up

When I folded up the bottom, I pinned the folded part BELOW the casing, as shown.

Do not pin over the casing- you want to make sure that you sew below the casing or you’ll lose it when you cut off the excess fabric after pinning and before sewing.
I pinned using extra long ball point pins (for knits) and pinned perpendicular to the bottom edge. I then cut about 2 inches BELOW the casing edge to ensure I had plenty of seam allowance. For this board sock, there will be about 2 feet cut off that is folded over, so 4 feet in length total.

Cutting the first notch- I didn’t cut all layers at once, just cut around in a circle.

Board sock with the original casing pinned to the new bottom (left), and leftover fabric (right)

When I sewed the original casing to the new edge created by cutting off the excess 4 feet or so, I used a zig zag stitch since the bottom will see  lot of stretching over time, and it is knit fabric. I used a 3.0 stitch length and 3.0 stitch width. Of course, you can hand sew the edge, just remember that either way, you will need to give the fabric a bit of stretch when sewing to ensure the stitches don’t bust out.

Sewing just above the casing, but not into it!

Once you’ve finished sewing the original casing back on to the new edge, cut away the excess allowance and you’re done! It took about 10 minutes and I didn’t have to go through the trouble of remaking the drawstring casing and threading it through. You should be able to draw up the bottom just like it did before. Here’s my new shortened board sock drawn up at the bottom:

It’s actually easy to put on, and I figure it could fit up to a 6’0″ board, no problem. Can I surf a board under 8′? It’s not looking promising these days…yikes.