I'd had these plain fleece gloves for ages, I thought they needed a bit of a makeover.

I started off thinking I would do something kind of fair Isle inspired, something with white on the red, then I started doodling ideas...

I ended up deciding on something a bit more folk art looking:

Fancy giving a pair of old gloves a makeover?

Here's what you need:

• Old fabric gloves

• A water soluble fabric pen (these from Leonis are my favourite) or fabric chalk

• Embroidery thread (I ended up using this ECRU DMC thread)

• A sharp embroidery needle

• A design idea, you can download mine here if you'd like to use it.

Draw the basics of your design on with the fabric marker pen or chalk. You can add the extras in by eye as and where you like. Unfortunately my pen is purple so it didn't show up especially well on the red gloves, but I wanted to get on with it so just went with what I'd got. You can just about make it out!

UPDATE: I used a Prym water erasable pen for these tutorial photos but more recently I’ve started using this one from Leonis which has a slightly finer line and more robust nib making it my new favourite.

Cut a length of embroidery thread and separate the 6 strands into 2 lots of 3. Tie a knot at one end and start embroidering your design.

I’ve got a guide to some basic embroidery stitches here if you need a little help.

I used Backstitch:

Lazy Daisy Stitch:

and French Knots:

Give your beautiful new gloves a quick swish in luke warm water to get rid of the pen lines, dry them and you're done.

As you can see my stitching is not completely perfect or even, that's ok, a real human being embroidered these gloves so a bit of variation is nice.

 Now look round to see what else you can add a little embroidery too! 

I'll be linking up to all these great link parties