No-knittin' Mittens...

It's mitten season!  The days here can be so nice and sunny one minute and freezy-cold the next so one must carry her mittens in her coat pockets. The Littles especially need extra-warm mitts and they are hard to come by, but not any more!  This no-knit granny has found a way to make cozy mittens with old sweaters and polar fleece.

I was nosing about in The Bakery the other day and found some lovely mittens made with felted wool sweaters.  They were beautiful and warm and seemed fairly uncomplicated so I decided to try my luck with making some myself.  I bought a bit of fleece from Annie and a couple of wool-blend sweaters from the thrift store and went home to find a pattern and some instructions.

I found a couple resources:  here and here.  I immediately made my first pair (gray with green fleece trim) and then moved on to my second pair (blue snowflake with red palms) and then decided I needed to make the Littles a pair.  I didn't have a small pattern, but just traced around a child-sized mitten and made a pattern just like the ones in the tutorials only smaller.  The pink stripe mittens should fit the yearlings, Toodles and Bee, and the gray with pink trim will fit Peach who is four years old.  Such fun! 

One note:  some of my sweaters did not shrink down as well as I thought they would, but I cut them up anyway and they worked just fine for this project.  I think you could also make mittens from old polar fleece shirts and blankets too.  Wouldn't the mittens make nice Christmas gifts?