No frozen fingers for me, thank you!

The end of last week was very successful sewing-wise for me, since I managed to get a lot of work done on two projects. Number one was the pair of mittens, lined with rabbit fur, to keep my fingers from freezing.

Those were roughly orientated on the pieces from Mühlberg, but no copies or reproductions. I used blue wool twill and rabbit fur. Since I have very small hands, one single rabbit fur, of normal size, was just enough for the pair of mittens.

I made the fur lining first, stitching it together from smaller bits where necessary. I worked from an outline of the hand and with forming a piece of fur around the thumb for the difficult bits. It is no perfect fit nor a good-looking pattern of fur bits, but as this is only the lining, I spent no time on making it look nice.



The wool covering for the mittens was again traced out on the fabric, cut and stitched together with a very simple thumb set into a slit at the appropriate place. It is a tight fit over the leather, just as I intended.


The mittens were wearable just before the weather got warmer again - from -17°C to more than 3°C. They do a wonderful job in keeping my fingers snug and warm, even the thumb in its single compartment.

Making them took several hours, mostly due to the fact that I was a) not aiming for speed, but instead trying them on often to enjoy the soft fur and the warmth, b) taking my time to find out how I could best use the fur and not waste anything, c) not having worked with fur for quite a while, d) stitching small pieces together around the heel of the hand and the thumb (think jigsaw here).