Santa Gloves Technique

I usually just needle sculpt the fingers of my Santa dolls, but wanted to try stitching individual fingers. Those narrow seams can be tricky to turn and frustratingly fragile, but I think I’ve come up with a compromise of sorts. On these hands, I only stitched the lower portion of the fingers separately; the upper parts of the fingers are just needle sculpted into the palm. I think this technique gives the illusion of long separate fingers with a lot less trouble. I’m making a gardening Santa and wanted him to appear to be wearing work gloves so I painted the hands with a coat of black gesso; then sanded them before painting with acrylic paint (which was also sanded). The hands were sculpted from a suede type knit fabric so the look and feel is ever so slightly fuzzy.