How to measure hands for gloves and mittens

 Fariba / gloveshand lengthhand widthhandsmeasuremittens / December 8, 2018

For knitting gloves and mittens that perfectly fit hands you need to measure the size of the dominant hand length and width. These measure along with the thickness of the yarn you choose will help you to figure out how many stitches you need to cast on and how much you need to work for palm, fingers and thumb. Below picture give an idea of how you can get those measurements.

Hand Width
Hand width is required for finding out how many stitches you need to cast on. It is measured by warping a measuring tape around your hand while you are making a fist. The measuring tape should be below the knuckles and your thumb should be out of it. In the given picture the hand width is 19cm. Having this number in hand figure out how many stitches make 10 cm of the flat fabric of your selected yarn, then you can figure out how many stitches you need to cast on to make 19cm of the fabric. For more tips on this topic click here.

Hand Length
For finding the length of the hand open the hand facing up, having the end of measuring tape on top of middle finger measure it to the bottom edge of palm. This number will be sum of measure for the fingers and palm. You can get the measure for fingers and palm the same way, the fingers measure will be from top of middle finger to the growing line of the same finger. In the given picture the finger length is 7cm and the palm length is 10 cm, the total length is 17cm.

Measuring thumb
For measuring thumb put the end of measuring tape on top of thumb and measure it to growing line. In the given picture the measure is 7cm.