Cool Mint Kneepads

These kneepads function for activities like painting walls or gardening. They are extremely comfortable, but I cannot say how resilient they are.

Materials: fabric, soft foam for padding, 2 hard craft foam half spheres, 2 Velcro straps, shoelace, thread

Tools: sewing machine (bobbin), scissors, some form of blade to cut the thick soft foam, something the clear out the hard foam half ball (I used a scalpel, paint scraper, and extendable box cutter), hot glue gun (hot glue sticks), wood skewer, gloves for cutting into hard foam, measuring tape

Disclaimer: the hard craft foam worked for someone with knees my size. The half sphere selected would not work for everyone due to sizing differences. I am also doubtful about the lifespan of this hard foam piece. This indicates a different thing could act as a hard piece for the knee pad.

First, I drew a circle with the scalpel on the flat side of the hemisphere. From there, I used the extendable box cutters and paint scraper to hollow out the hemisphere.

Make sure to hollow out on top of an easily cleanable surface. The hard foam can get messy and scatter about.

Because this hard foam is grainy and is questionable on lifespan, this fabric can help keep the hemisphere together and make sure it's not as messy. Just wrap enough fabric around the hemisphere, cut accordingly, and then hot glue the fabric to the hemisphere. Do this for both hollowed hemispheres.

Put a square of foam within each hemisphere and then an additional much larger square that would cover the edges of the flat side of the hemisphere on top. To measure that, simply put the hemisphere over the foam to guesstimate the size. The additions of the soft foam is so the hard foam does not dig into your knees and results in a comfortable fit.

The soft foam I have is very thick. A staple gun and pins would not hold the soft foam down Instead, I had to use the wood skewer to puncture a hole through the soft foam and hard foam. I could then push the shoelace through. I had to do this 4x. At the end, I tied off the yarn. This was my way of securing the soft foam to the hard foam.

Placing the combination soft and hard foam piece onto the fabric, guestimate the size needed to put over the knee pads. Wrap that around, flip inside out. From here, I put the fabric on the sewing machine. Make sure the bobbin and thread are available, put the foot down, and sew. Knot the threads at the ends. Flipping it back to normal (no longer inside out), I then attached the fabric to the foam with the hot glue gun.

Personally, I had done 1 knee pad at a time from here. I completed all of the rest of the steps before doing the second kneepad. It is up to your discretion whether you do both kneepads at once or do one after the other.

Using the measuring tape, I measured out the approximate length and width of fabric I would need to stretch around my leg and then added some extra width. The length of the fabric was about 9 inches, for my leg, This allowed for fabric above and below the foam. Making sure the fabric was inside out when places together, I put the foot of the sewing machine down and sewed the fabric. Afterwards, I turned the fabric the right way and used hot glue to attach this larger piece of fabric to the hard foam (which is also in fabric).

There is excess fabric on the ends, over the hard foam sections. This is good for evening out the design and having more surface area covered on one's leg.

I cut out a 5 by by 6 triangle foam piece from my soft foam supply. I cut this in half and then hot glued inside the fabric that stretches around one's knee. One triangle went on the left side of the hard foam and the other triangle went on the left side. Albeit the kneepad is bulky, the shape is more even.

For additional evenness in appearance and more comfort, I added two foam squares above the hard foam hemisphere (with hot glue). This additional foam also provides a spot for the optional Velcro strap to wrap around, which ensure the clip from the Velcro strap does not dig into the top of someone knee or the area just above the knee.

-cutting excess fabric and thread

-even out design by adding some adjusted soft foam pieces. This can make the design appear more evenly distributed and adds protection/ cushion.

- add the optional Velcro straps. Depending on how big you made the fabric that your leg goes through, you will need the Velcro strap to secure the knee pad to you.