Spring Cleaning Dust Mitt Tutorial

I went to a great local rummage sale recently where you can get a bag of clothes for a dollar. I was a little gluttonous and grabbed everything that I thought I could cut up and use for something else - although I didn't have anything in mind at the time.

Later when examining some of my finds, the materials dictated the project - and I ended up using three different garments together for this project. I used a sweatshirt, a terry cloth shirt (who wears terry cloth shirts?), and the cuffs from a shrunken sweater. You could do this same project with just a sweatshirt and a hand towel if you wanted. Or if you have a swiffer, try this similar tutorial.


Typical of my sewing style, this tutorial has few actual measurements - just deal with it.

First I cut the terry cloth shirt into a rectangle that was a bit wider than my hand and twice it's length. Then I cut four - four inch strips the same length as my rectangle from my sweatshirt. Next cut slits along both long sides of each rectangle, towards the middle, but not quite touching so that your rectangles are shaped sort of like a pipe cleaner. You can see mine aren't very straight.


Lay one strip fuzzy side up, towards the left side of your terry cloth rectangle, and sew down the middle. Lay the next strip so that it overlaps the first and repeat, making sure you don't sew down any of the fringe from the first rectangle. Repeat this with the next two strips so that you have spaced the four strips somewhat evenly across the width of your rectangle. It should look like this:


Now fold the fringe on each long side in like this:


Now you will fold the terry cloth rectangle in half with your fringe inside, and sew up the side seams. Folding the outer fringe in will insure that none of it is caught in the seams.


Once you have sewn your side seams, with the mitt still right side in, place the cuff from your sweater (or take one from your sweatshirt) and put it inside the mitt. With a zig zag stitch, sew the edge of the cuff to the edge of the mitt. My cuff seemed a lot smaller than the circumference of the mitt, but I stretched it as I sewed and it ended up fitting fine. If you're worried about this, you could pin it first. It should look like this once you have sewn it on (sorry for the fuzzy picture).


Turn the mitt right side out and trim any stray threads. Ta da!


Now get dusting!

Made one? Add it to the wewilsons pattern pool.