mittens!!

I knit when I go into the city. I hadn't been doing that as much as usual, so having a finished object is quite rare (besides which, there is a tiny-gauge project that refuses to be completed... I don't know, it just doesn't say anything to me anymore, not even, "Finish me already so you can take pictures, then never see me again."

But I made these! They're really soft Koigu cashmere and they have bows to make them girly, and to tie them to Kikay's coat.

So pretty, but this winter break we decided to go snow-tubing. The pretty kitten mittens did not pass muster from the Winter Sports Gear Expert husband, so waterproof hand-covers were called for (for both Popoy and Kikay). Now, I'm not spending $20 per pair for one day of tubing. Enter the craft stash busting resolution!

I used the small and medium patterns from Little Things to Sew, but with ikatbag's lined mittens tutorial in mind to make them fleece on the inside and waterproof on the outside. (You guessed it, that's PUL from the cloth-diaper days!)

 I made a few minor changes tho.

 First and most important, a fleece inner means you'll need to add another 1/4 inch to the pattern for the outer so there is room and it doesn't get all bunched up trying to fit two same-size mittens inside one another. Since I was making these from remnants, I didn't really pay much attention to grainlines, but it does seem to make them easier to sew and put on if the stretch of the fabrics (since they are both knit) goes side-to-side on the palm... or the longest side of the mitten pattern parallel to the selvage.

On both the fleece lining and the PUL outer, I sewed almost all the way around but left a bit unsewn from the thumb downward -- on the royal blue ones I left it on the thumb side, on the navy ones I did it on the side opposite. (I ended up preferring the thumb side, but just by a little.) This is so it's easier to make the casing for the elastic -- it maneuvers better under the presser foot.

After sewing the casing, I put the elastic through, ends poking out top and bottom. So it doesn't go back in, I put pins at the ends. 

Pull on the pins as you seam up the fleece lining so the elastic gets secured in the stitching, then cut off the excess length of elastic.

Then I went in with a 1/4" fold to sew up the remaining side seam on the PUL. 

Lastly, fold up the two layers toward each other and topstitch -- to seam the fleece and PUL together at the bottom. Although it's such a small circumference, it's easy to do this now rather than flat because it's right at the edge.

 All done!! (the royal blue ones just have a bottom elastic guide and not a full casing, because I thought it might bug her to have that thick cuff. So that's another option -- just securing the elastic at the seams so it only pulls in the fleece and not the outer.)

 Ready to go tubing...

and in action...