Summer of Glove

A little project I thought would take a few days ended up taking all Summer and into the Fall, but now it’s ready to go into the world.

Update 11-14-24: Limited quantities of finished gloves sewn by me now available at my store!

Snake Tree gloves. The backs and the palms have different, complementary designs, and can be worn either way.

Here is my “Recovery Glovery”, art gloves for dermatillomaniacs, trichotillomaniacs, and everyone else. They’re lightweight stretchy cotton-spandex, designed for indoor use but can be used outdoors too; I’ve been wearing mine on bike rides.

Finger-Snakes design, worn palm-side out. I want as many eyes on the road as possible when I bike, and these have 6 per hand!

Wait, did you say dermatillomaniacs? What?

Finger-Snakes gloves worn the way I intended, with the eyes on the palm and snakey sun on the back. But it doesn’t matter, they can be worn either way.
The Finger Snakes twirl around each finger!

Dermatillomania, also known as Excoriation Disorder, is compulsive skin picking. Trichotillomania is compulsive hair pulling. They’re a subset of body focused repetitive behaviors or grooming disorders. Lots of people suffer from them, but they remain poorly understood and seldom talked about. Some think they’re a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD); others consider them a type of addiction, giving rise to recovery programs.

Garden Snakes gloves, with a leafy eye on the palm and flower eyes on the fingertips. They’re SNAKES not sperm, okay?

Light stretchy cotton gloves are one tool to help dermatillomaniacs and trichotillomaniacs settle the hands and relieve the tactile “triggers” that drive them to attack their skin and hair.

Light stretchy white cotton gloves, sometimes called “eczema gloves.” This project started when I drew on a pair of cheap boring white gloves with a sharpie. It didn’t look great, so my only alternative was to design glove fabric from “scratch” (pardon my triggering language).

Gloves work! But they’re boring. If you’re gonna have fabric covering your hands, it should look cool. Hence, this project.

Night and Day gloves, backs

After designing, printing, and sewing 6 rounds of prototypes, I have made my gloves fabric available on Spoonflower, for which I get a whopping $1.40 per yard sold. I currently have no way to mass-produce gloves for sale, so sewing-your-own is the cheapest way to distribute them for the time being. However I kinda enjoy sewing them now, and will make small amounts of my handmade ones available for sale soon.

Faith and Doubt gloves, backs.
Faith and Doubt gloves, palms

Currently I’ve only designed and sewn gloves to fit women’s more-or-less medium-sized hands. The cotton-spandex jersey stretches to fit a range of sizes (smallish to large-ish women’s hands), but there are limits. If there’s demand for it, I will make my next prototypes sized for men, or bigger hands in general.

Heat and Light gloves

Meanwhile you can order fabric here:

The glove sides are paired up in my preferred combinations, but if you sew them yourself you can match any side with any other side design (except the “slim fit” ones, which due to printing distortions won’t match the rest, but will match each other). Be sure to order Cotton Spandex Jersey by the full yard only!

And here’s a sewing tutorial:

 

Share

Author: Nina Paley

Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.

3 thoughts on “Summer of Glove”

  1. This is cool as fuck! I struggle with trichotillomania and have wanted to buy art from you, so this is killing two birds with one stone.

  2. This is such a great idea. Cooler weather brings cracking skin around my fingernails. Constant attention to lotion. I use a nail file to smooth cracking skin. My hands are very small. But the cotton spankex would be something I could wear happily.

  3. Pingback: Episode 152: Post Election Derangement and Schadenfreude – Heterodorx

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *