Recyled mittens

 This is a pair of mittens that we have made from a wool sweater. The sweater had a lot of detail work on including french knots.  You will want to wash this sweater before you begin the cutting. Depending on what you are doing with the sweater, it wouldn't matter if it was mostly wool or not, but I would suggest when making mittens, that you do use a sweater that is made of wool. The mittens will be warmer.

 I forgot to take a picture of the sweater before I began my cutting.  Sorry, sometimes I just get so excited with what I am doing!  So here you can see the sweater after I did some cutting.

 The pattern is a free down load from www.hobbyfarms.com, they have two sizes.  I do think once you got the concept down you could make them any size you like. You will want to have the bottom of the mitten pattern against the edge of the sweater.  This way you mitten will have a finished edge when you are done with your sewing.

 You could open the sleeve and try and get a pair out of there too.  I wasn't sure how pressing that sleeve would work out, so I didn't give it a try.

 I opted to have the inside part of the mitten a different color, I'm glad I did.  I think it adds some interest, plus stretches the pretty sweater farther. I can only see one pin- but you will want to sew from pin to pin.  These directions are included in the patterns. Once you have sewn this part together, you will want to put the back and front together, and sew them.

 Start at the bottom edge, to begin your sewing. You are going to need to sew up to where the thumb part is and then stop sewing. Flip the thumb and finishing sewing the mitten.

 So here we are sewing up to the thumb joint.

 Flip the thumb and finishing sewing to the bottom edge.

 It should look something like this.

And when it's turned right side out, you've got yourself a really warm mitten.  When cutting out your mittens, I found it very helpful to use the color pattern pieces.  When the red was up, I got the one mitten, (left)  color down the other side (right)  Hope you have as much fun as I did.