Pueblo Shoe-Sock

The Arizona State Museum has in its possession three shoe-socks made by looping thread. They are made of cotton thread, with woven yucca soles. These date from pre-European contact (c. 1100-1300 CE). This past spring there was a flurry of discussion about the socks on the nalbinding yahoo group that I belong to, as people discussed if the stitch used was the same as any known European nalbinding socks. The final suggestion was that they were made using the Coptic stitch. I disagreed, and decided to verify it by reproducing the stitching pattern.

Here is a close-up of one of the socks:

While I did not recognize the stitch by looking at the photo, it became obvious as soon as I started stitching. If you are familiar with embroidery stitches, you will recognize it as the detached buttonhole stitch.

Here are my samples:

Detached buttonhole stitch is on top, Coptic stitch is on the bottom.

Both the detached buttonhole stitch and the Coptic stitch create loops in the same manner, working from left to right, bringing the thread in front of the loop. But that is where the similarity ends. The Coptic stitch places each stitch directly above the stitch from the previous row, creating vertical lines that resemble stockinette stitch. Like stockinette stitch, it curls over at the edge.

The detached buttonhole stitch places each new stitch between two stitches on the previous row. The resulting fabric is more net-like, and it does not curl at the edge.

Do you agree with me? You can see more pictures of the artifacts on the museum's website.