Wristlets made from sweater sleeves

After updating my sweater, I had some leftover sleeves, a sewing machine and itchy fingers. I began to wonder what to do with these sleeves as I didn't want to throw them out. Then I remembered how my arms get cold in the winter whenever I wear short sleeves and I got a brainwave - wristlets. I saw a pattern on ravelry for wristlets that I wanted to knit but this was a great idea of how to reuse fabric.

For those of you who don't know, wristlets are like arm warmers but only go from the wrist to the elbow.

For this project, you will need matching thread, a dressmaker's pen, a sewing machine and pins.

I started with these sleeves, which were actually too big:

So, I pulled at the fabric to see what would be a better fit and marked it with a dressmaker's pen. In this case, it was about an inch too big at the seam. So, I followed the line of the sweater and cut off the excess for both sleeves.

On the wrong side (in this case, the side without cables), I pinned the cut seam of the wristlets with minimal seam allowance. I sewed the seam down with a zigzag stitch. I did the same for the second sleeve.

The last part is easy. I took each cut edge and did a zigzag stitch all the way around. This resulted in these frilly wristlets:

And these look VERY cool under my jacket:

Estimated time for this project: 20-30 minutes. I seriously zipped these up in no time.

Notes:

• I didn't originally intend for these to be frilly but that was a result of the zigzag stitch on the knit fabric. But, I guess we all learn things like this as we go along.