By Mama With Love: Hand Muff Tutorial / Upcycling a Suede Skirt

In the past two weeks I've made a few hand muffs. The two pictured above are some of the muffs I've made.

In this tutorial I'm going to show you how you can make one of your own. One of these is made with one piece of fabric and one is made with two (one for the outside and one for the liner.)

What you need:

If you are going to have a separate fabric for the liner then the next two steps applies to you.

1.) Fabric for the outside 16" X 13 "

2.) Fabric for the lining. (I used the same fabric for both in the above photographs.) 16" x 7".

3.) Zipper if you want a pocket. 7"

4.) If you want a pocket, then you need 2 rectangles of fabric 5"x7".

4.) Strap for hanging around the neck. This can be a ribbon, cord, a strip of the same fabric as the muff, but just folded inward to enclose the raw edges, or something else of your choosing. You need 22 inches of this.

5.) 16" x 9" of fusible fleece interfacing. (Optional) This gives more shape to your muff, helping it hold the rounded shape and it gives additional warmth. We live in the South and are having an unusually warm winter, so for the ease of storing these in backpacks I opted to leave the fleece interfacing out. I'm already using warm fabrics, anyway.

If you want to just cut one big piece of fabric then cut one that is 16x21". That's what I did for the faux fur muff.

The two hand muffs pictured above were ones that I made for our daughter. Her older brother is now wanting one of his own. I let him pick out the fabric and he pulled this out of my fabric stash.

Remember when these were in style back in the 80's and 90's? Yeah, well my mom must remember the time, in the 80's, when I begged her for a few weeks to buy me a pink one with a matching pink jacket because she has given me several of these skirts in recent years as she finds them in thrift stores. I don't wear them anymore, but I smile and say thank you and think about all the cute baby/toddler shoes, purses, and now hand muffs I can make with this suede. I wish I still had the pink, but I must have donated that to a thrift store long ago.

So, suede is what we're making the outside of this muff out of, and a faux woolly fur fleece is what we are using as the liner. Sorry I can't give you the appropriate name. It escapes me at the moment.

1.) *If you are putting a pocket in the back of your hand muff....* The first thing I'm going to do is find the center of the 13" edge of my outer fabric as well as find the center of my zipper and place the right sides together matching centers. Stitch. I use a zipper foot and press the side edge of my zipper foot up against the zipper part, so that the zipper acts as a guide rail for my foot as I stitch down the line. I usually start with the zipper open and then when I get close to the end I raise my presser foot and zip it shut to finish out the line of stitches. This helps me to keep a nice clean line of stitches.

2.) Once you get one side of the zipper sewn on you want to sew on 1/2 of the pocket. Here's what my pocket rectangles look like.

I used the lining from the skirt and just cut it so that the hemmed edge is going to be the edge that I sew against my zipper. You want to lay it, face down onto the back side of the zipper. The zipper is still laying face to face with the outer fabric. Place your hemmed/folded edge right up to the zip part of the zipper. And you want to stitch in the same place that you just stitched. It should look like this.

Pocket fabric is on this side

3.) Now you are going to sew the lining to the outer fabric. Place your 16" edges together and stitch 5/8" away from the edge. Do one side at a time. After you do the first side, if you fold it open it will look like this.

Now having both sides of the liner and outer fabric sewn together.

4.) Now you are going to reach into one end of this tube and grab the other end as if you are going to pull it through and turn it right side out. Only, don't pull it all the way though. Pull it half way through so that it now looks like so.

5. Now, sew the other side of the zipper to the other side of the outer fabric, making sure to keep right sides together and sew with your presser foot side up against the zip part of the zipper as you go down the line.

6.) Now add the other piece of pocket fabric to this side of the zipper exactly like you did in step # 2.

7.) Then put the two pocket pieces together and sew around the three open sides. It should look something like this:

8.) Now, sew around the edges that are matched up right now, making sure to leave an opening on the liner side so that you can turn this hand muff right side out.

9.) Once you turn it right side out, this is what it should look like.

10.) Now you want to slip stitch that opening closed.
11.)You're hand muff is turned wrong side out at this point and you want to keep it that way until you sew the neck strap on. I cut a strip of the sued off of that skirt. You will sew the ends to the inside of each side. Sew it to the lining, and you will also do this part by hand.