Sew Very Goth Tutorial: Fingerless Gloves

Hello, gentle readers! Warning for those on slow interwebs, like mine: Very pic-heavy post! But totally worth the bandwidth, in my humble opinion. Since you've all been kind enough to read and comment on my posts for the past 9-ish months, I thought I should like to repay the favor by posting a how-to for one of the most Goth-y of essentials, fingerless gloves.

I love fingerless gloves. I have bought many pairs from places like Hot Topic and Claire's, but every time I put them on, I would pause and say: Why did I pay $8.50 for these? I can sew, I'm sure I can make them for much less! But it remained nothing more than an idle thought until a few days ago, when I found an old knit top that needed a bit of revamping.

After snipping and snapping it down to size (pics of the re-cut top forthcoming on a day when my hair doesn't look terrible!), I had a fair amount of excess fabric, so on impulse I decided to try and make a pair. And they came out great!

Because I was making it up as I went on those, I didn't do a tutorial with them; but naturally, having made one pair so quicky and easily, I wanted to make another, and this time I did step-by-step, took pictures, and everything! So without further ado, here's the tutorial:
Materials needed: Stretch fabric (this is a great way to use up remnants and scraps!), sewing machine or serger, fabric-marking pencil, your arm
Step one: Lay out your fabric, making sure you have two layers and it's all nice and aligned. This was part of an old tank top that started to fall apart; these are an excellent project for upcycling.

Lay out your arm on your fabric and trace around it. Sewing tip: I use charcoal white pencils on dark fabric and heavy lead pencils on light, because I find them much more precise than tailor's chalk. I wanted these to be elbow-length, so I traced to just below the elbow.

Take away your arm and add about 1/4 inch to one side for seam allowance. Since these are made of stretch fabric, you don't want a lot of extra ease or they will hang oddly! Also, trace in an indentation for your thumb, about 1/2 inch down from the top of your glove.

Cut out your first glove, flip it over, and trace it to make a second. Cut them both out and place them right sides together.

Seam all the way down the straight side of the glove (the side without the thumb indentation). I used my serger for this, but if you don't have one, you can also use the zig-zag stitch on your sewing machine.

Carefully serge or zig-zag stich along each of the thumb-holes.

Fold down the top edge and stitch it under. Then, sew together your final seams above and below the thumbhole, turn them right side out, and enjoy your fab new fingerless gloves-for much less than $8.50.

Good luck! If anyone makes some fingerless gloves using this tutorial, send me pictures-I would love to see what all you gorgeous folks can do!