Hands are often cited as the hardest part of the body to draw, so it stands to reason that a glove ought to be the hardest accessory to sew. Summer may seem like an odd season start a glove sewing adventure, but I recently decided to try my hand at the task. Gloves have always fascinated me and I wanted a sewing project that would be both small and challenging. And honestly, I was in the mood for a project that was doomed for failure. (No irony intended; sometimes, when you don’t know what you’re doing it’s quicker in the long run if you start off by failing immediately and with gusto.)
Every good obsession deserves a rabbit hole, so one Saturday morning I started watching my way through what I could find on the topic. Our normal Weekend Watch installments focus on a single YouTube channel, but as I tumbled down the proverbial rabbit hole, I found some pretty interesting things across multiple channels, and so I decided to do something a little different for this weekend’s watch. Here are some favorites that I came across.
If I were more interested in taking baby steps I probably would have started off with this “Cheater’s Glove” tutorial from Lindsay Hamilton. This project relies on 4-way stretch fabric to keep the pattern simple — perfect for a cosplay that needs to be con-ready ASAP.
The idea of tracing your hand to create a pattern isn’t revolutionary — you won’t have to look far or very hard to find more videos showing how to do essentially the same thing — but I thought this video was especially clear and easy to understand. I looked for more episodes of Stay Stitching, but unfortunately that seems to be the only one, and the rest of the channel is mostly so-so humor. Bummer.
Evelyn Toomistu has a handful of leather working videos on her YouTube channel, including some that show her going through the process of making gloves. While these videos aren’t narrated, each shot plainly shows what she’s doing and how she’s doing it. These ended up being the most educational videos for what I wanted, both because of their simplicity and because it focused on the hand sewing.
Not something I’d want to attempt, but I really enjoyed this episode of How It’s Made about rubber gloves. Something about those twirling hand molds making their way down the conveyor belt… I found it pleasantly Seussical.
#Goals. Daniel Storto is a high-end glove maker working out of Gloversville, New York. While this video only touches on the most basic steps of actually making a glove, it’s inspiring to see some of his more unconventional designs. When you listen to him speak about the craft of glove making, it’s clear he takes an artist’s approach. While I don’t think I’d ever find much use in the square glove, I love that he plays with the basic shape of the glove to create interesting draping effects.
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