These are my new very cool, very warm mittens. They are made from a felted wool and angora sweater. The lining is fleece. And they are very, very warm.
These mittens were the latest project of the Renegade Militant Seamstresses. Wendy and Lorraine showed us how to make them. They were not really hard to make.
The former sweater was a soft and lovely cable-knit turtleneck. I wore it with a brown skirt. Then one summer there was an unfortunate incident with the skirt and I was unable to wear it to work any more. That incident involved my hips and a Tommy Turtle sundae. It's too horrible to think about.
So, inspired by my daughter, I machine washed and dried the sweater. It came out very small, about a foot in length and two feet in circumference, just barely big enough to make two mittens. Jan let me use some of her lightweight royal purple fleece for lining. The fleece I had was too thick.
I'm thinking about making some more mittens with this pattern. I have some windblock Polar Fleece in the basement, but not enough to make any sort of garment. That would make really warm mittens. I'd use the windblock fleece on the outside and some thinner fleece on the inside.
One of the Seamstresses mentioned that the mitten pattern would work for oven mitts. Hmmm... 100% wool would not conduct heat and is fire resistant. It sounds like another project. I guess I'll have to go thrift store shopping.
3 comments:
oooo we up in the north always need warm mittens! I would be interested to hear about the unfortunate incident with the skirt that involved your hips and a sundae... It must have been traumatic! ;)
too bad you didn't know about this project when you were visiting - you could've shopped my stash! I've got windblock fleece leftovers and plenty of felted sweaters from past thrift store excursions.
I'd love to see the pattern for those mittens sometime! And I can confirm that felted wool makes an excellent oven mitt: I have one that's technically a quilt (cotton broadcloth on the outside of the sandwich) where the "batting" is two layers of felted wool thrift-store sweater. Getting all that stuffed under the presser foot of my sewing machine was a challenge, but I now have a terrific oven mitt!
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