Easy Fingerless Gloves from a Sweater

When Anshu from Blooms and Bugs invited me to join her Fall Wardrobe Revamp Series, I knew just what I wanted to make.

I love fingerless gloves. I mean really love them! I love that I can use the computer, sew, knit or use a touch screen or camera all while keeping my hands warm. I love that I can stuff them in my jacket pocket and pull them on over a t-shirt and feel like I'm all bundled up.

And I love to knit them. I've made dozens of these in my knitting days! They are fun, and work up in a few hours of uninterrupted time. Unfortunately, 'hours of uninterrupted time' have been a little scarce lately.  For example, I started this last pair for my husband before my daughter was born and finished just last week.

Not willing to wait a few more years for new pair for myself, I decided to make some without knitting a stitch. I've seen tutorials for making these out of felted sweaters, but I wanted some that had the look and feel of a hand knit. These fingerless gloves are made from the sleeves of an old sweater so they are soft and cuddly and fit just right.

The process is fairly simple-- and the best part is it can mostly be done on the couch!

How to make Fingerless Gloves from a Sweater (without felting!):

First, find a sweater that you like sleeves of. It helps if the sleeve is fairly snug fitting. These happened to have a cute little cuff that I liked.

Pull the sleeve on and decide how far up the forearm you'd like the gloves to reach. (I liked about 6-8 inches above my wrist).  Also make a note of where you'd like to cut a hole for your thumb.

Cut the sleeve off the sweater adding about an inch for the hem at the bottom of the glove. Make sure both are the same length!

Serge or zig zag along the cut edge to stop the edge fraying. 

Now we need to make a tiny hole in the seam of the gloves to poke our thumbs through. If your sweater has a sewn or serged seam, use a seam ripper to cut through about an inch of the seam stitching. If your sweater has a seam like this the one shown below, look for a small row of 'v's along the edge of one side of the seam. Carefully snip about an inch of these 'v's.

In either case, hand stitch the seam allowance around  the thumb hole, being careful to stitch a few times to secure the top and bottom of the thumb hole. If you have the seam with the 'v's make sure to stitch down the 'v's on either side of the hole to keep the stitches from running.

After that, it's just a matter of folding up the serged edge and hemming! Use the magic stitch to make the hem invisible from the right side.

And that's it! All done in just a few minutes. They make a nice pair, don't they!

I've been loving these now that the weather is a bit cooler hear in Texas! And my husband is loving that I don't keep stealing his when I feel a bit chilly.

Thanks Anshu  for inviting me to participate in this series! It gave me just the push I needed to get these done before it gets really cold here. Be sure to check out her other tutorials!

And a special thank you to my best friend for hand modeling and helping me photograph this tutorial!

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