Cold Little Fingers

Another week, another snow storm. If your household is anything like mine many of the hats, mittens and gloves from the previous cold season have either been outgrown or have fallen into that black-hole that all laundry rooms seem to have.

I had a mad search for warm hand gear for my boys after our most recent snow storm. I found some good ski-gloves that still fit my oldest, but all I could find for my youngest was a pair of polar fleece mittens. He loves to play in the snow, but is not terribly fond of how cold his little fingers get when his mittens get wet.

I decided that he needed some wool mittens, which stay warmer when wet than polar fleece. I knew I wanted the fabric to be felted to allow for a bit better water-proofing, but I didn’t want to crochet the mittens and then felt them.

I grabbed my box of left-over felt pieces from when I was playing around with felting thrift-shop sweaters. I remembered I had a couple of felted sleeves that I thought would be ideal. What I really loved about these sleeves was the rolled detail at the end of the sleeves.

Of course for this sewing task I needed a pattern. I drew around my little guy’s hand, then sketched some shaping. I wanted to utilize the fold in the side of the sleeve to minimize the length of the final seam, so I did some manipulating to create a straight edge along the side opposite the thumb.

Then I turned the sleeves inside out and traced my pattern piece on the felt with a marker. Once that was done I cut out each mitten.

I used some sharp-pointed scissors to trim out a 1/4 inch of the cording in the cuff trim so the edges could be finished cleanly.

I dug out some matching thread and using a tight whip-stitch sewed an 1/8″ seam around the cut edges starting at the folded side of the mitten. To be sure no gaps would develop along the seam, I overlapped my stitching whenever I had to re-thread my needle.