15 Free Knitted Mittens and Gloves Patterns for Cold Weather

Mittens and gloves are the small-project category that pays back disproportionately. Three or four evenings of knitting and you have a finished pair you'll actually wear all winter. These 15 free knitted mittens patterns are sorted by category: beginner mittens with simple thumb gussets, fingerless designs for transitional weather, full five-finger gloves, and a few specialty constructions like colorwork and convertible designs.

Beginner Mittens

The World's Simplest Mittens

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tincanknits. Gauge-flexible — works at any yarn weight and adjusts the finished mitten size accordingly. If you've made a hat, you can make these. The thumb is a thumb hole that you stitch closed later.

Bella's Mittens

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Marielle Henault. Bulky weight, with simple cable detail running up the back of the hand. The cable is one cross every few rows — much easier than it looks in photos. Bulky weight finishes the pair in two evenings.

Arched Gusset Mittens

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Purl Soho. Worsted weight. The arched-gusset construction is the upgrade — it follows the natural curve where your thumb meets your palm, which means the finished mitten sits comfortably rather than pulling at the thumb base.

Classic Mittens No. 615

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Vintage Bernhard Ulmann Co. pattern. Worsted weight, with traditional striped colorwork. Available in flat or in-the-round construction — pick whichever you're more comfortable with.

Smitten (a Holiday Garland)

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Emily Ivey. Worsted weight. Tiny connected mittens on an i-cord, designed as a decorative garland rather than wearable mittens. Each mini-mitten takes minimal yardage; great use for leftovers.

Fingerless Designs

Easy Fingerless Mitts

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Maggie Smith. Worsted weight, bottom-up, with a thumb gusset. The shorter circumference means you finish a pair faster than full mittens, and the open fingertips are practical for using a phone or doing fine work.

Camp Out Fingerless Mitts

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tante ehm. Aran weight, slipped-stitch texture, worked flat and seamed. The seamed construction is the technical step-up; you'll practice mattress stitch on this one.

75 Yard Malabrigo Fingerless Mitts

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Jeanne Stevenson. Worsted weight, designed around using a single 75-yard mini-skein. Perfect for the hand-dyed mini-skein you bought without a project in mind. Seamless in the round.

Gloves with Fingers

The harder category. Each finger is a tube that picks up off the main hand piece.

Pioneer Gloves

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Kelly McClure. Fingering weight, ribbed cuff, classic five-finger construction. The pattern includes both written and charted instructions, which is rare for a free pattern. Use it as your first full-glove project.

Treads: A Tipless Gloves

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Victoria Anne Baker. Worsted weight, intermediate. The fingertips are left open — fingers covered to the second knuckle, tips exposed for phones and tactile work. Good middle ground between fingerless and full gloves.

Knotty Gloves

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Julia Mueller. Fingering weight, intermediate, with cables running up each individual finger. The cables on the fingers are the technical challenge — small-circumference cabling requires either DPNs or magic loop. Rewarding when finished.

Specialty and Colorwork

Norwegian Mittens for Mimi

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Anna Mazzarella. DK weight, intermediate, traditional stranded fair-isle colorwork. The chart is what separates this from beginner colorwork patterns — you're managing a two-color repeat across most rows. Worth the effort.

Sydänmaa Mittens

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Hanna Leväniemi. Worsted weight, with Finnish-folk-inspired cables and motifs. Charted pattern. The visual style reads as traditional Nordic.

Mitten Garland Advent Calendar

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Kathy Lewinski. Fingering weight, intermediate. Twenty-four mini mittens on an i-cord, each with a different stranded colorwork motif. A project measured in weeks. Useful as advent decoration but also as 24 small lessons in colorwork.

Fuzzy Mitten Lamb

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Barbara Prime. Worsted weight, shaped like a lamb — part mitten, part stuffed animal. Worked flat and seamed. A novelty piece rather than functional mittens, but the construction teaches three-dimensional shaping that transfers to other projects.

Tips for Knitting Hand Warmers

Measure your hand circumference, not your shoe size or sweater size. A mitten that doesn't fit gets gifted to someone with smaller hands or larger hands than yours. Take a tape around your hand at the widest point (just below the knuckles), then compare to the pattern's finished circumference.

Pick up gusset thumb stitches one at a time. The hole at the base of the thumb is where loose stitches show up. Pull the working yarn firmly as you pick up each stitch around the gusset opening, and knit the first round tighter than usual.

Use DPNs or magic loop, but not both. Pick one method and stick with it through the project. Switching mid-mitten creates uneven tension at the transition points. If you've only done magic loop, do magic loop. Same with DPNs.

Stranded colorwork mittens want a slightly looser tension. Floats inside the mitten can pull the fabric tight if you carry the second color too snugly. Stretch the work flat every 10 stitches to check that the fabric still has give.

Block finished mittens with the thumbs sticking out. Lay flat with thumbs perpendicular to the hand, mist with water, let dry. This sets the thumb position so it stays where it should rather than pulling toward the palm.

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