OK people you know the saying. March comes in like a…Lion Hooded Towel! Roar! Can you guess what it will go out like? (And plan on 2 more bonus towels during the month too.)
I’m kind of loving how this lion turned out:
Oh that’s pretty fun huh? Oh please please please let the weather turn lamb like soon. I am sooooo ready for spring! But in the meantime, let’s make a towel!
Lion Hooded Towel Tutorial:
Supplies Needed:
Hand Towel
Bath Towel (same color as hand towel)
Small amount of orange fabric that won’t fray (I recommend fleece)
Small amounts of white and black fabric
Heat ‘n’ Bond
Instructions:
As always (well, starting last month anyway), I will just be showing you how to make the head of this towel in this post. If you need to know how to sew the rest of the towel and attach it, go to my hooded towel tutorial.
To make our lion hooded towel, first, cut your hand towel in half (horizontally). Then fold the finished edge under about 3 inches and sew in place. (Oops-forgot to take a picture of that this time, so check the hooded towel tutorial for that. Sorry!)
Now, flip that hand towel over so you are working on the side that does NOT have the piece folded under that you just sewed. Cut out your eyes in white and black and then again in the heat ‘n’ bond. Iron the heat ‘n’ bond to one side of the eyes, then place your eyes where you want them on the towel and iron them in place. You’ll want to leave room in front of them for the snout.
Then applique them in place with a tight zigzag stitch:
Now, using the other half of your hand towel cut out 2 pieces of snout and 4 ears. Put the 2 snout pieces together and sew around the whole thing leaving the top, flat part open. Do the same with the ears:
Now turn them all right side out:
Grab your snout and cut out a little black nose from black fabric. Place it where you want it and applique around it. Then use the same stitch to create whiskers. You’ll probably need to go over your whiskers several times:
Attach your snout to the face with a zigzag stitch (a pretty tight one) all across the top of the snout. This will also close the opening that the snout has.
Now cut out a bunch of the mane pieces from your orange fleece. I used about 15 or 16 pieces. You can make it fuller if you want.
Cut your towel in the spot where you want your mane and ears to go:
With your face piece begin to lay the mane pieces and ears how you want them.
Then lay the other part of the head on top of that, pin everything really well so it doesn’t shift around, and stitch it all together:
Should look like this:
Now fold your face in half so that the right sides are together and stitch up the back to create the hood. (Pictures of that in the hooded towel post.)
Once your hood is formed but before you attach it I recommend doing this. Lay your hood out like this:
And sew across the top like this:
Then snip that off. That will round out the top of the hood a little. (And those pictures are green because that’s from the frog towel post.)
Now attach your hood and you are done!
This is SO cute! I don’t have kiddies of my own, but my nieces and nephews would go nuts for these! Monsters and Lions!
I LOVE the hooded towels but my sewing machine has serious issues with the thickness? Am I doing something wrong?
No, that’s normal probably. I have a very heavy duty machine that handles them well. I recommend getting a heavy duty needle and then be ready to put some muscle into it. You’ll have to pull the fabric to guide it more than normal.
So very adorable!!
Love it!!!
These are awesome! I’d love for you to check out our first ever Pattern Party. Those with free patterns or templates are invited to link up! Hope to see you there! http://getyourcraptogether.blogspot.com/search/label/Pattern%20Party
Thank you so much for yet another lovely towel idea. I have made two already, and my kids just LOVE them (as do I). Will try this one for sure as well. I’m in awe of your creativity and just wanted to thank you for sharing!!
Your towels are darling! What little kid wouldn’t love to have one of these!? We’ll be featuring your idea over at Someday Crafts tomorrow, so come by and take a look!
Awesome! Let me know when it is up!!
Wonderful! Came here today to pick a hooded towel to make for a pinterest date I have tomorrow! My one year old son is going to look ADORABLE in this lion!
I love the lion one. Hope it went well!
LOVE IT …. LOVE IT!!! Thank you!
I’m looking forward to making this for my nephew. I was just wondering…for those having trouble with the thickness, would a walking foot help??
I’m not sure? One thing I do is lift up my presser foot a little as needed and adjust things before continuing on. I have a beast of a machine though so that helps too.
I did this for a 3 years old birthday! :) Thanks for the tute. Simple and easy to understand.
One thing I did different was instead of cutting up a bunch of mane pieces (picture 6), I used a long piece of rectangle shape orange fleece and sew that on first. Then cut it up evenly once its all stitched up nicely. This helped with sewing everything on and I didn’t have to worry whether would I have enough manes although you won’t get the overlapping mane effect. And because I thought it needed reinforcement, I sew another line and the mane flops over nicely cause I couldn’t cut it all the way to the yellow towel part (if you get what I mean). Thought it might help people who are having trouble with the thickness of the towels :)
Oooh very smart! You’d think I would have that of that!