How To: Repurpose Your Heinous Christmas Sweaters into Useful Winter Hats & Mittens

It's really no wonder why Christmas is the most popular and widely celebrated holiday of the year. Your whole family gets a chance to spend some much needed quality time together—and not just gorging on food like at Thanksgiving. But in all seriousness, that's not the reason at all... we're talking Christmas presents here.

While you may have hoped for a new smartphone or car, the likelihood of that was pretty slim, not like ones of these ugly Christmas sweaters people like to give out because they don't know any better.

Yes, the infamous Christmas sweater. Everybody has a family member who hands these things out as gifts, whether it's your grandmother or sorely out-of-touch aunt.

But this year, instead of locking that hideous looking sweater deep in the bowels of your closet, you should try and get some actual use from it as repurposed mittens and winter beanies, like Elsie Larson from A Beautiful Mess did. Seriously, it'll make you feel better.

Making the both the mittens and beanie is pretty easy, and you don't need to be a pro sewer to get this done. You just want to make sure and use the hem—the bottom part of the sweater—for all of your re-purposed winter gear.

For the mittens, simply outline your hand using chalk or a Sharpie, making sure to keep your thumb out wide for better spacing for your fingers. Make sure the sweater is turned inside out.

Once the hands are outlined, use scissors to cut the material. You can use a sewing machine to stitch the edges or do it by yourself with a needle and thread. Simple.

The process is the same for the beanie. Outline a large semi-circle on the bottom of the sweater and then cut. Remember, going bigger is always better, since you can adjust the material and stitching to make it smaller. You can also trace the outline of a beanie that you already have in order to avoid sizing issues.

Then just sew her together.

For more information, check out the sweater beanie and sweater mittens posts on A Beautiful Mess.

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