Sew Yummy: Mini Mitts Tutorial

In lieu of all the felt food that’s been appearing around the house, and the fact that my little man has taken to playing ‘cheffing’, I thought we could really use some kidlet sized oven mitts. To handle all those hot felt pizzas. I was going to be lazy and buy a pattern for these, but then I just thought I’d give it a go and surprised myself by how quickly them came together. You could whip them up in under an hour and nothing beats a quick, cute project like this for replenishing sewing mojo. They’d make great gifts too!

The best part is you can make them any size. To make one mini-mitt you”ll need to start with a hand. Literally…

…and you’ll also need to gather…

• fabric for the shell
• fabric for the lining
• some sort of batting / thick felt to pad them out
• co-ordinating thread for your sewing machine
• scissors, pins, paper + pens.

1) Start by tracing around your child’s hand to make the mitt shape. As you can see there are two lines above. The lighter line was the original shape and the darker outline is where I changed the shape slightly so that the side where the thumb is drops straight down instead of following the contours of the hand.

2) Once you’ve cut out your paper mitt, you can pin it to your fabric (doubled over) and cut around the outside including a 3/8″ seam allowance. When you get to cutting the ‘v’ between the thumb and the fingers, keep the seam allowance as far in you can and then cut straight into the point.

3) Cut out you batting (doubled over) without leaving a seam allowance.

4) You now have two opposite mitt pieces and two batting pieces.

5) Cut out your lining fabric in the same way as the outer fabric ( 3/8″ seam allowance)

6) Center one batting piece to the wrong side of one outer fabric piece and secure with a few random pins.

7) Now you’re going to make that cute quilted effect but sewing evenly spaced lines across the whole surface. You could go horizontal or diagonal or create diamonds. Whatever takes your face.  Repeat for the other batting and outer pieces and trim threads.

8) With right sides facing, pin outer fabric pieces (now with batting) together and sew with a 3/8″ seam.

9) Notch the curves like so.

10) Clip into the ‘v’ between thumb and fingers as close to the stitching as you can go. Repeat steps 8) to 10) with lining pieces.

11) To make the little fabric loop take a piece of co-ordinating fabric and cut to approx 8″ x 3″.

12) Fold one side into the middle length-ways.

13) Then the other.

14) Then fold in half again and stitch along the open side 1/8″ from edge. Depending on your fabric you might need to quickly press the fabric but I found press with my fingers kept the folds in place just fine.

15) Fold the loop in half and pin to the outside of the outer fabric, centering it over the side seam on the opposite side to the thumb. Have it stick up about 1/2″ above the top.

16) Turn the lining mitt inside out and place over the top of the outer mitt so that the right sides of the lining and the outer are facing each other. Line up the raw edges and pin in place.

17) Sew together with a 3/8 ” seam, leaving a gap of 1.5″ at some point around the mitt.

18) Pull the mitt back through the gap until it is the right way out and then stuff the lining up inside the outer mitt.

19) I don’t know about you but I can’t stand hand-stitching especially towards the end of a project when I just want to get it finished. So to close the gap, just tuck it neatly inside the mitt and sew around the entire perimeter of the top of the mitt 1/8″ from the edge.

And that’s it. Admire your mini-mitt!

Thanks for having me, back over to you Laura…

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That is so cute and who wouldn’t want an oven mitt covered in those hedgehogs?  I’m sure my boys would love their own mini mitts. Thanks for a the fantastic tutorial Sophie. I’ll be back tomorrow with a round-up of all the fantastic sewing and baking projects that have featured over the last three weeks.