So I have decided to embark upon a massive study of heels in order to figure out which construction techniques are my favorites.

My foot, personally, is a bit weird to fit, because I have next to no arch (like a duck!) and a low instep.

Length of foot (heel to toe): 9”
Measurement around foot at arch: 8.25”

Hopefully those measurements help you determine what modifications would be needed for your own heel.

For my own purposes, I almost always knit socks with 56 sts in the round, so I will do these ones in that same stitch count, which will make most of my heels 28 sts across.

Here’s the plan:
Standard top-down heel flap & gusset
Square / Dutch Heel
Modified Square
Round / French Heel
Rounder Heel
V-Heel / Handkerchief Heel
Band / German Strap Heel
Nancy Bush Folk Sock (if I can get the pattern!)
Hermione’s Everyday Sock
Standard toe-up short row (W&T)
Priscilla Wild toe-up short row (no wraps - decrease & m1)
German Short Rows
Sweet Tomato
Standard toe-up gusset & heel flap
Fleegle Heel
Scylla
Afterthought / Peasant
Hat heel
Thumb-joint flat top heel
90-degree heel
Forethought Heel

#1 - Square / Dutch Heel with slip-stitch heel flap.
So, I’ve knit this heel a few times. I like how it looks on the side, but right at the bottom of the heel flap, I find the sole almost kind of sticks out. It’s not very noticeable when the sock is on, but I’m not sure I LOVE it. Maybe reversing SSK & P2TOG to K2TOG & SSP would bring the heel flap stitches down in front of the sole stitches and prevent this. Maybe I will attempt this on the modified square heel!

#2 - Round / French Heel with eye-of-partridge heel flap.
This goes to the bottom of the pile in terms of fitting MY foot, ease of knitting and overall look. I really love the look of the actual heel flap, but because of the nature of the linen stitch (eye of partridge), it pulls the row gauge tighter, making more slipped stitches along the edge of the heel flap than normal. All these patterns tell you to pick up 16-18 sts on the side of the heel flap. Fine. I had 22 on the nice side (the purl side), so I picked up that many, because I don’t like the look of picking up less sts than you have. I find it always looks messy. I’d rather pick up more sts and decrease the gussets a few more times. So I picked up 22 sts down the purl side of the heel flap, and 22 sts up the knit side. This was difficult because the knit side isn’t so pretty, because we didn’t slip every single row. It was hard to distribute them evenly, since it looked like I had about 30 sts, some of which were super tiny. The side you see in the picture is the knit side of the heel flap, and you can see how my pick up row along the flap isn’t perfectly even.

Let’s talk about the stitch count for a second, though. Picking up 22 sts on either side of the heel flap obviously gives you more sts in the round than if you picked up 16-18. This could actually come in handy for someone who has a high instep and who usually finds their socks pulling tight over the top of their foot. I find this myself sometimes, but usually with short-row heels. So, there’s a reason one might choose to do this combination.

Now - the round heel. I love this heel. I’ve knit it several times. Actually, Cookie A. uses it a lot, I think. At least she has in the two patterns I’ve knit myself (Monkey and Pointelle). I like the look and feel of the round heel much more than the square heel. It’s not as angular. My heel is round, so I want a heel that fits it more accurately.

Summary:

• Eye of partridge: nice stitch pattern, but is a bitch to pick up stitches afterward.
• Picking up more than 16-18 sts could be a good idea if the foot you’re knitting for has a high instep.
• Round heel: delightful.

#3 - Rounder Heel with Stockinette Heel Flap
Easy peasy! For a few moments while knitting this heel flap, I tried to teach myself to knit backwards more quickly to avoid turning the work each time. I am a fast knitter, though, and I knit continental, which doesn’t work super well with backwards knitting, so I gave up, knowing that it’s actually quicker for me to turn the work and purl across. The stockinette heel flap was quick to knit up. I’ll be doing the remainder of the heel flaps like this (except maybe for the two patterns I’ll be doing), having now tried out the two main heel stitches.

The rounder heel, for me, doesn’t feel much different than the round heel. It’s a matter of two stitches, really. The round heel starts on the center 3 sts, while the rounder heel starts on the center 5 sts. Doesn’t make a difference to me.

#4 - Modified Square Heel with Stockinette Heel Flap
Well, I much prefer this heel to the square heel, I’ll definitely say that. I’m not sure I like it as much as the round heel, though.

#5 - V-Heel
Like the round heel, but pointy. I don’t actually mind it. It pulls the heel flap down around the sides of the foot in a way that almost hides the heel turn, which I appreciate.

#6 - German Band Heel
Am I crazy or is this basically a wider square heel?

#7 - Hermione’s Everyday Sock Heel
Love this pattern! I just made the heel, of course, but I love how it looks. At first, I was suspicious of the garter edge of the heel flap, because I thought it would look super ugly, but it just ends up being a nice design detail. It also mostly rules out the problem I had with the straight eye-of-partridge heel flap. Actually, the pattern doesn’t exactly do that, but I took it upon myself to slip the first stitch of each row of the heel flap so I could pick them up more easily.

Now, on to the toe-up models!!!!

#8 - Scylla Sock Heel
I decided to go with the toe-up heel flap model first, since I was already in heel-flap mode. The Scylla heel is interesting to me, because I hadn’t really realized that with all the decreasing going on, I’d have to do some increases when going back up the other way! I tried using m1s as the patterns specified, but I didn’t like the way it looked. Too holey. I switched it up for k1fb. All in all, I like the way it looks. One of my favorite things about a toe-up heel-flap sock is that the edge where the gusset meets the heel flap is super neat, because it has not been picked up, but rather decreased together.

#9 - Fleegle Heel
The Fleegle Heel is a very unique heel. It dispenses of the idea of a gusset almost entirely. It’s almost like a classic short-row heel in that it could be knit either direction (will look different, but this heel looks so strange to begin with it wouldn’t matter). It looks almost like a giant v-heel. It’s not a super deep heel, but it does eliminate some awkward lines, and might be good for a self-striping kind of yarn. Very interesting.