Last week, one of my blog posts featured a “DIY polar fleece mittens” craft project video, which was made by Christine from Christine’s Crafts. If you didn’t get to watch the video, that first link will take you back to the original blog post.
Her video made it seem so easy, I just had to make a pair of mittens for myself! Today’s blog post shows you how I created a fur-lined variation on Christine’s original project, along with the tips and tricks I learned as I sewed along.
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Creating a pattern for my hand and thumb wasn’t too hard to do, thanks to Christine’s simple guidelines in the video, but I discovered that I didn’t own any polar fleece. When my kids were little, I made them things out of polar fleece, but now that my kids are all grown up, I just sew for dolls.
Doll clothes look best in small prints or solids, and where I live, it’s hard to find polar fleece in those options. Also, polar fleece looks really bulky on small dolls like Barbie, Skipper, Stacie, and Chelsea. So I just don’t keep it around in my fabric stash.
What did have that was useable? I had some purplish fake fur and a small amount of sweater fabric. Thankfully the colors of these fabrics were somewhat compatible. So I decided I would take Christine’s super easy 10 minute polar fleece mitten project and turn it into something much more complicated: fur-lined mittens!
It may seem like I have two many linings, but that’s not true.
I took one of the left-thumb mitten linings and placed it over one of the right-thumb mitten linings, keeping the fuzzy side together.
Now, I decided that my mittens might be a bit of a snug fit, so instead of sewing around them on the sewing machine, like Christine does in her video, I decided to whipstitch around the edges of my mitten linings, to ensure that I would be able to get my thumb inside the narrow thumb after sewing (see Figure 1 below).
Since I wanted to add some sew-on elastic at the wrist, I thought it would be wise to sew from the thumb joint up toward the top of where the index finger would be. Then I went back and finished sewing around the thumb and down the inside seam from the thumb to the wrist (see Figures 2 and 3 above).
At that point, I opened up the fur lining, laying the fur flat against the cutting mat.
Probably the trickiest part of this project was measuring my own wrist for elastic (see Figure 4 below).
I used the “pull method” to sew the elastic directly onto the bottom of the mitten’s lining. If you’re not familiar with the “pull method,” I’ve made a tutorial that shows you how this is done. Just click one of the links I’ve provided here to learn more about it.
Next, I folded the lining, keeping the plush sides together, before whipstitching to finish sewing the lining together.
You might be wondering why the elastic is visible in Figure 6 above. Remember, this is just the mitten’s lining. After I finished making a lining for both mittens, I cut out the sweater fabric to create the outer fabric for my mittens.
Once again, I made sure I had two with a left thumb and two with a right thumb, just like we saw with the lining.
Laying outer fabric mittens one on top of the other (right sides facing), I pinned (Figure 7) and stitched around the inseam, thumb, fingers, and outseam (figure 8), but this time I used my sewing machine. I then clipped edges and turned the mitten right-side-out.
I placed my hand inside the furry lining, with the soft side inside, and then I slipped my lining-covered hand into the mitten I’d made with the outer fabric (the sweater fabric). That’s shown in Figure 9 above.
There were still raw edges of fabric where I had stuck my hand into the mitten. I folded these inside the mitten, nestling them between the fur and the sweater fabric.
Then I whipstitched all the way around the mitten’s opening.
I followed all of these same directions for the second mitten, and then I had a cozy pair of fur-lined mittens to wear when I went outside to feed the animals! YAY!
The hardest part of making these mittens was getting my stripes to match on the sweater fabric. If you look closely, they don’t match one hundred percent, but in general, I’m happy with how they turned out.
They’re super warm! And I’m glad I added the elastic, because when I wore them outside to feed the pets, I didn’t have any issues with them slipping off.
Once again, I want to extend special thanks to Christine from Christine’s Crafts. This was a really fun project!
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