Many self-made datagloves I see on the Internet have been made by re-purposing existing gloves. While this is a wonderful “hack” and solution, I also wanted to add to this possibility that of tailoring your own gloves to a specific set of hands.

The following instructions explain how to measure your hand, what measurements to take, and how to translate these into the construction of a 2D fabric pattern.

The following pattern is intended to be made up of a 4-way stretch fabric like powermesh.

This technique/work-flow was developed in the process of tailoring Arne’s Lazy Programming Datagloves.

Links:

Flickr set: https://www.flickr.com/photos/plusea/sets/72157695505447295

Materials and Tools

For construction:

Marker
Pencil
Paper
Measuring tape
Geo-dreieck (ruler)

For glove:

Powermesh (https://www.tissufabrics.co.uk/sheer/power-mesh.html)
Thread
Sewing machine (hand-sewing is also possible)

Step 1) Naming System

Before we go into measuring our hands, lets agree on a naming system for the different parts we’re going to measure and need to reference.
I base my naming system off a mix of anatomical names of the hand’s bones and joints, but simplifid so that is easier to remember and reference.

Anatomical joint names:

This is a nice illustration of the anatomy of our hands:

Fingers:

Thumb – th
Index – in
Middle – mi
Ring – ri
Little – li

Joints:

Distal Interphalangeal Joint (DIP)
thDIP
inDIP
miDIP
riDIP
liDIP

Proximal Interphalangeal Joint (PIP Joint)
thPIP
inPIP
miPIP
riPIP
liPIP

Metacarpophalangeal Joint (MCP joint)
thMCP
inMCP
miMCP
riMCP
liMCP

Step 3) Marking

Make a fist and with a marker, mark the highest points of all your knuckles.

Step 3) Measuring

Take the following measurements of your hand.

The bee-line distance between your MCP joints:

And mark the

Step 4) Construction