Fleece mitten how-to

The handicrafts project the girls are currently working on are mittens made form polar fleece material. I thought I would do a post on how to make them. I got the idea from Martha Stewart's site. you can find the original here.

We first drew around each girls' hand to create a pattern. The pattern has to have about 1 inch or more around the original hand size to allow for the seam and also to allow room for the hand to go through the opening.

After pinning the pattern on the fabric, we then cut out (4) of the same pattern. We also cut out hearts from some leftover felt to decorate our mittens.

The hearts had to be stitched on first. To do this select a color of thread that you want to use and knot at the end. bring the needle up from the underside right at the edge of your design and pull through.

Then place the needle a little into the edge of the decoration and sew through to the underside.
The stitch you create looks like this: If you use a contrasting color, it looks really nice. Continue stitching around the design.

Two sides (one with decoration and one without) are then placed together and pinned to hold as you are stitching. The girls did a blanket stitch around the outside to finish the edges. You can find directions for the blanket stitch in the previous post. Kasey has one of her mittens finished so I thought I'd show a picture of the finished product.