Junk Creation

Making Simple Gloves–From Couch Leather to Work Horse

by Joshua Johnson on June 25th, 2007

Alright, you can see that the gloves I made aren’t exactly designer. First of all, they use leather that is a bit higher quality than your average glove leather–I found what I believe to be an entire sofa’s worth of leather at the thrift store! (I don’t know for sure if it has ever been a couch, but it was shaped like a couch without stuffing–you know, all flat and poofy in the wrong places…) The gloves are a bit crude, and I’ll be the first to admit that they could use some tweaking, if I make them again. However, I can give you some tips on how to follow Eunice Close’s instructions from the Weekend Website post.

Follow her instructions on tracing your hands closely. They are well written and fairly detailed. If you want fingerless gloves, I suggest marking your finger lines with a dot slightly above or below where your second knuckles rest on the paper. (I made the mistake, with my gloves, of putting the end of the glove right at the knuckle–this will make for a strange fit.) Also, follow her thumb-hole and thumb-piece directions–except for the lenght of the thumb, then do the same thing as with the fingers and put the end of your thumb piece above/below the knuckle.

I am a bit of a novice when it comes to gloves, so I made up my own instructions from there…and the gloves weren’t too bad. The main difference is that I didn’t add any extra material to the fingers’ width in order to stitch them together. What I did was cut out the pattern, cut the thumb-hole, and then cut strips of leather that were as wide as my hand is thick. (I would be a bit generous–something else I learned the hard way. On the bright side, I gained a callous on my thumb from the extra stitching…)

I chose to put the stitching on the outside of the glove for greater comfort (these are work gloves, no need to get a whole new set of blisters from interior stitching, right?) but they could easily be placed inside, if you were to sew them inside-out, then turn them rightside-out. It is good to decide first, becaue if you don’t, you may have some markings from when you cut out the materials.

I used appolstery thread to sew the gloves. It has held up well. One thing to keep in mind: the thread is very strong, but also very thin. Take care not to put the stitch too close to the edge or the thread will cut through the leather and leave a hole.

Once you are done, it might help to get them a little moist so that they will loosen up (I use mine for professional yard care, so my sweat did the trick–I know, you’re thinking, “Ick,” but at least I didn’t have to do any extra work, like you might).