Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Winter Mittens Door Hanger

Nothing says winter more than cute fuzzy mittens! And to create an adorable wall hanger with mittens and winter florals is just the perfect way to welcome Winter! It's really a super easy winter fun craft to make using leftover scraps! A cute addition to winter seasonal decor!

Welcome to our monthly Sustainable Craft Challenge hosted by Julie @Sum of their Stories! This challenge is all about sustainable crafting! Each month is themed and all projects must have some sort of a sustainable element to them. This could be an upcycling or recycling element, or something that reduces waste, uses leftovers, etc. The theme for the month of December is Winter!

Materials Used:

Fleece fabric scraps
Kitchen oven mitt
Faux fur fabric scraps
Chalk pen
Fusible Interfacing (heavy weight)
Parchment paper
Fabri-Tac Fabric glue
Fiberfil
Safety pins
Frosted pinecones, faux frosted evergreens, berries, snowflakes

This adorable mittens door hanger was made using fleece scraps from a tree skirt I had started, but never completed. Maybe I will after making this. You know how that goes. lol!

At first I thought I would draw a mitten using my hand as a guide but unfortunately, I can't draw a straight line, let alone a mitten pattern from my hand, so . .

I cheated and used one of my kitchen oven mitts to draw a pattern using a chalk pen. This is one scrap piece. It looks really thick - and it is! I made three more - using four scrap pieces to . . .

create two mittens, front and back.

Then glued them together using Fabri-Tac fabric glue.

Once the glue was dry, I tried turning the mittens inside out, but they looked so much smaller than what I wanted so I turned them back to the original side.

For the cuffs, I'm also using a piece of faux fur scraps from a few years ago that was leftover from covering a stool - you can read about that here.

I wanted a 6" finished cuff - nice and deep, so I cut the faux fur fabric 12" in height. Then I measured around the width of the mitten, which was also 12" plus an inch for overlap and got 13 inches for the length of each cuff. Be sure to use short snips when cutting the faux fur to avoid cutting into the fur pile too much. You want a nice overhang of the faux fur at the edges.

Since the faux fur fabric was soft and flexible, I used fusible heavy weight interfacing to make the cuffs sturdier.

I started by laying parchment paper on top of the interfacing and ironing the interfacing to the back of the faux fur fabric using a "hot" temperature setting to seal.

Once the interfacing is set, fold over the fur cuff, interfacing sides together. Then place the edge of the mitten about an inch from the end and edge of the fur. Apply fabric glue to both sides of the mitten being careful to not close the top of the mitten. You might want to insert cardboard into the top of the mitten to avoid closing it up. Then fold over the fur cuff onto the glued area of the mitten, smoothing it out. Overlap the faux fur edges and glue in place. Let dry. I laid down a heavy book on top to make sure all glued areas were sealed together.

Lightly stuff the mitten including the thumb area with poly-fil.

Repeat above steps for the second mitten.

. Each mitten is approximately 6.5" wide by 15" tall. This does not include the fleece selvage edge rope.

I was able to cut off the selvage edge from the fleece to hang the mittens. I love that it's actually a self-finished edge that won't unravel and fray. Perfect to use for hanging.