How to Make Gloves

In this instructable, I will show you how to draft your own glove pattern and make a pair of gloves. You can use this with any fabric, leather, vinyl, or similar material, stretchy or not.

Hands are complicated 3D shapes with many degrees of freedom of movement. Gloves need to accommodate this and are as such more complicated than 2 pieces of hand-shaped fabric sewn together.

SUPPLIES:
For drafting:
-duct tape (or something similarly flexible)
-paper (preferably tracing paper or something similar)
-a disposable glove (latex, nitrile, whatever you have on hand [HURHUR])
-a pencil
-a permanent marker
-sharp scissors

For construction:
-fabric
-thread
-pins
-Fray-Check (optional, but nice to have)
-a sewing machine and/or a needle and lots of patience

Step 1: Terminology and Key

Trank -  the hand-shaped part that constitutes most of the glove
Fourchettes - the little pieces of fabric that go between your fingers
Thumb - the part that goes on your thumb (derp)

Fourchettes are one of the most overlooked parts of gloves, but they are VERY important for comfort and mobility of your fingers.

Key:
-darker fabric color is the "right side", or the side of the fabric that you want on the outside of your glove
-lighter fabric color is the "wrong side", or the side of the fabric that you want on the inside of your glove

Comments

[edenham]

This was wonderful! My church is actually going to use your instructions to create gloves for the local homeless this winter! Thanks for your great illustrations and very clear instruction. Gather Church thanks you!

[dkéri]

I think your diagrams are perfect. I'm downloading your instsructions and I hope that one day I will able to make my own gloves. Until that I thank you for the tutorial! =)

[Penolopy Bulnick]

Nice! I have been wanting to make gloves, this will be really helpful when I finally do :)

[Lanvi]

Very nice tutorial! i'm making those fingerless "hobo" gloves and this really gave a great start on how to even begin. Thank you very much for making this :)

[Lanvi]

All right! I finished them \o/
Here's what I ended up with :D
http://imgur.com/a/xxg1F#3
Two pics of the gloves. Thank you so much for the great instructions :)

[amycookcrafts]

Thank you so much for this great tutorial. My sister has to wear gloves to bed, because she scratches herself in her sleep, and the cheap gloves on the market shred in one night, but I've been unable to make her any, due to my inadequacies of figuring out how to make a glove right by myself. This should help. Thanks again.

[scoochmaroo]

This is great! I was going to do this exact same Instructable, but now I don't have to! I made a pair of red lace gloves for one of the Lady Gaga costumes 

I did all of my sewing by hand, since the machine ate the lace.  It also allowed me to give the pieces a better fit to my hands as I sewed them.

Can you include some pictures of the finished gloves you made?

[Icetigris]

Thank you! I am working on some more gloves, so once they're done, I'll post them.

[craftyv]

Great ible, I loved the drawings.  The "quality" of the stitching could be improved a little and this might encourage more people to look at the whole thing. Hand stitching is notoriously difficult especially around tight corners. Use a smaller stitch perhaps and pull a little tighter. NOTE: When dressmaking it's always recommended that a thread slightly lighter than the fabric, is used. (this won't show through as much). I hope you continue with these, very good work.

[Icetigris]

Thanks. I probably should have mentioned that this is a mockup that I did, which is why you can see the stitching. I have a finished glove, but it's fingerless. I wanted to show what one with the fingers still on looks like.

[craftyv]

(removed by author or community request)

[Icetigris]

I added an image note, so if you hover over the image you can see it. I'm also working on some non-fingerless gloves so I'll eventually replace the images of the mockups.

[craftyv]

I see it now. Thank's a lot.

[Euphy]

Epic illustrations!

[Biggsy]

This is a really good instructable welldone, I may give this a try

[thepelton]

If you cut the thumb part separate, you can add it out of line with the fingers just like an actual hand.
I like this instructable!

[Icetigris]

Yep! A separate thumb piece is really important for having thumb mobility. I'm glad you liked it! :]

[colacastink]

Used this to make a fingerless glove (just cut the fingertips off and hem `em), it's GREAT. I would have never thought to do anything *other* than just sew 2 hand turkeys together, but this looks so much better :P

[rimar2000]

Very clever!!!

[Icetigris]

Thank you! :3