Thursday, November 7, 2013

Fingerless Gloves (Tutorial) - Creative Every Day - Day 7

Today I continued to look through my Pinterest boards for the seventh day of the Creative Every Day challenge; and came across a pin for fingerless gloves that led to The Renegade Seamstress. I've been looking for practical ways to use the felted wool sweaters that I have on hand, and this is something that I definitely can use.

Fingerless gloves I made from a felted wool sweater.
The edges the fingers and thumb and hand-embroidered
with red embroidery floss.

The first step to making fingerless gloves is to felt a 100% wool sweater by washing it in alternating hold/cold water; and then drying it at a high temperature. An adult-size sweater generally felts down to a child-size sweater.

Then, cut the ends of the arms off. The cuffs will be the part that goes on the forearm, while the cut part fits around the fingers and thumb.

Part of the sleeves cut off.

The next step, according to The Renegade Seamstress is to make a pattern of your hand. I did this, but felt like it was an unnecessary step.

The shape of my hand cut out from a piece of paper.

Turn the sleeves inside out so the right side is inside. This is the time to sew a seam along one side if the sweater sleeve needs to be reduced in width. In my case, the felting process made the sleeve quite small so I could skip this step.

So, then I used a sewing machine to sew a triangle to separate the fingers from the thumb.

Sewn seams separate the fingers from the thumb.

Snip the middle of the "V" to separate the finger section from the thumb section.

Using a fabric scissor, cut the section out between the "V."

 Turn the gloves inside out and then using 3 strands of embroidery floss or a heavier Pearle cotton thread, blanket stitch along the edges to finish them off.

The palm side of one of the fingerless gloves that I made.

After seeing how the embroidery floss disappears into the wool, I would do any other fingerless gloves with a heavier Pearle cotton so that the finished edge stands out a bit more.

Once I was done, Sophia asked me to make her a pair of the gloves. I have more colorful sweaters waiting to be felted, so it will be fun to make another pair in a brighter color.

1 comment:

Rita said...

I have seen crafters use these doing craft videos. :)