Sewing during a Pandemic: "Women's purple and claret coloured lamb mitts"

I love making mitts and I've already made 2 pairs of lamb leather mitts.  This post is a tutorial of making mitts from leather.  I will be building on that tutorial below so you may wish to refer to both.

Milliners' ads in period newspapers show that mitts were available in many colors and materials.  There were several different types of leather listed as well:  kid, lamb and shammy for example.

Boston, MA 1762

New York,NY1768

New York, NY 1771

Portsmouth, NH  1768

Philadelphia, PA 1767

I had already made some straightforward traditional lamb mitts.  This pair was used in the leather tutorial post linked above.

I decided to make black lined with gray to wear with my wool mourning gown which I wear a lot in the winter.  Leather lined with silk is incredibly warm.  I kept these a bit plainer by not adding embroidery to the hemmed edges.

I was intrigued with the ad that mentions purple and claret lamb mitts.  I'm finding purple leather mitts to be fairly common in ads so why not reproduce those?  I wanted to make these a little fancier so I decided to base the embroidery on the extants below:

Linen Mitts

Black Leather Mitts

Color choices made:  Purple lamb with white silk and embroidery.  I normally use silk thread but this was during the pandemic lockdown so I had to work with the thread I had on hand.  I was lucky to find just what I needed.  Embroidery will be done with 1 strand of the Soie d''Alger silk floss.

For the claret mitts:  claret lamb plus pastel muted pink silk and silk floss.

Some helpful items:

The rubber thimbles on the thumb and forefinger make pulling a needle through leather sooooo much easier.  Size 12 glovers needles pierce the leather easier and make smaller holes.  They also bend easily so be prepared to go through a few of them.

One thing I did not go into detail with in the previous tutorial post was cutting the mitts out.  Mitts are cut on the bias when cutting from fabric so the lining will need to be cut that way.  For the lamb/leather however, you must go in the direction of the stretch which is perpendicular to the spine of the skin.  Inspect your leather for weak spots too because sometimes there are areas where the leather is much thinner.  The purple skin is 1 oz. lamb leather and the claret is  1 1/2 oz. lamb leather, both about 8 square feet which is enough for 2 pairs of mitts.  I will note that there is a significant difference when working on the two different weights.  If this is your first pair of leather mitts, you will find 1 oz. to be easier to work with.

I laid the pattern on the skin and traced it using a sharpie.  You cannot pin the leather.  You can scotch tape it in place if you are worried about the pattern slipping.  I just poked pins straight into the edge of the pattern piece by the edge to keep it from slipping. Cut a single layer at a time and remember to flip the pattern for the 2nd mitt!  Try to conserve the leather, fitting the pattern as tightly as possible on the skin.  Save your scraps!  They come in handy!

First I completed the embroidery on the hand using 1 strand of Soie d'Alger silk floss which matches the lining on both pairs of mitts (pink for the garnet mitts and white for the purple mitts).  I marked the lines using one of those blue water removable marking pens.  Note--and this is really important--this silk floss has a nap.  You need to thread the end you pulled from the skein into the needle.  If you thread the other end through--you will have knotting as you stitch.  Since you are only using one strand at a time, be sure to mark the starting end of your unused strands/

Once the embroidery was done, I made the thumbs as outlined in the tutorial and glued the seam allowances on the thumb seam, the hems on both edges of the thumb and the hem around the thumb opening on the mitts.  The previous tutorial contains information about what type of glue to use.

Using matching thread, whip stitch the thumbs in place on both the leather and silk mitts.  It's always helpful to have an assistant!

Cover the whip stitches with herringbone stitches using 1 strand of silk floss.  You will only be stitching through the top layers of the leather.

 Sew the side seams in both the silk and the leather mitts. This is literally the only place I use my sewing machine in 18th century sewing.  This leather is thin enough that you can use a universal needle though leather needles are preferable.  You will need to glue the seam allowances flat in the leather mitts.  I use a toothpick to apply my glue to about 2 inches of seam allowance at a time and immediately finger press the seam allowances in place.  This is contact cement so it grabs immediately on contact.

Roll the seam flat with the seam roller.

Next you need to glue the hems at the top and bottom of the leather mitts.  I do this the same way I do the seam allowance.  I just turn up a 1/4 inch hem and glue an inch or so at a time.  The tricky part is the point at the top of the mitts since it's a tight curve.  I do that by applying 3 dots of glue.

Then I just turn under the hem at those points and complete the rest of the hem.  I flatten out those "bumps" after the rest of the hem is done.

Take your toothpick with glue, stick some glue in those little bumps and flatten them out.

Turn the mitts to the right side and check the hems.

Use the seam roller to flatten the hems from both the right and wrong side.

Press under the hems on the silk mitts (lining).  With the wrong side of the silk lining out, drop the lining in the leather mitts and clip in place, making sure that the lining is not twisted.  I like using Wonder Clips but binder clips, paper clips, scotch tape--just about anything will work.

The lining gets whip stitched in place using tiny stitches that blend in.  You can use thread either the color of the leather or the lining.   I used size 100 silk kimono thread in white to stitch the lining in on both pairs.  While it didn't match the pale pink, the thread is so fine it blended it nicely.

Once the linings were all stitched in, I decided that the red mitts looked best without additional embroidery so they were compete.

I stitched a narrow embroidered edge on the edges of the purple mitts using one strand of white silk floss.

Final thoughts--I think I'm done with leather mitts for awhile.  This makes 4 pairs.  I do love them though.  I did learn that 1 oz. leather really is easier to work with.  1 1/2 oz. is significantly heavier.  The red mitts, being made out of the heavier weight should prove to be quite warm.   Now I get to rest my fingers before the net project!