Tiger Hooded Towel Tutorial

Time for another hooded towel!! I’ll admit that the tiger hooded towel has been on my to do list for a long time but I haven’t done him yet because the stripes seemed so daunting. And truthfully, this hooded towel is more work than most, but the end result is pretty fantastic.

Now looking at this guy I also realized that he’s awfully similar to the teddy bear, he’s just got tiger stripes.

I’m participating this week in a fun idea from No Big Dill. Sew All 26. Project ideas for all 26 letters and this week…it’s the letter H! Hence the Hooded Towel. (Check out the full series over at No Big Dill.)

Tiger Hooded Towel tutorial:

Supplies Needed:

• Orange hooded towel

• Orange hand towel

• Small amounts of white and black fabric

• Small amount of paper backed adhesive such as Heat n Bond

• Print these Pattern Pieces (These are actually for the Teddy Bear but you need the same pieces. You also need to cut 4 long triangle pieces to create the stripes on the face.)

Instructions:
Like always, I will share with you how to create the face for this tiger in this picture and the have you refer to my basic hooded towel post for how to construct the hooded towel itself.

Cut out your pattern pieces. Cut the large eye out of white, the eyeball from black. The snout and ears you will cut from extra hand towel. The nose in black, the inner ear in white and then also cut an oval in white that will fit inside the snout to be part of the face and 4 long triangles to be stripes on the face. (Take a look at the pictures to see how to do this.) Cut everything out of your paper backed fusible adhesive as well. Adhere everything to the paper backed adhesive.

Start by cutting your hooded towel in half horizontally. Just a note-some of my readers prefer to use the whole hand towel to make it bigger. If you prefer that, don’t cut the hand towel, just use it horizontally. (If you need images of this go here.)

Fold the selvage edge of the towel under about 3-4 inches and sew it in place.

Grab your orange snout pieces.

Place your nose pieces on one of them and iron them in place:

Sew a satin stitch around each piece. Now you are going to want to use a satin stitch to sew the little mouth thing  and whiskers as well. I just free handed this with my machine but you can draw it on first if you want. Just do a nice tight zig zag. I went over each of mine twice. (See this up close in the top picture on this page.)

Put right sides together and sew around them leaving the straight edge open. Turn right side out.

Now, place your face pieces on the towel where you want them. Iron them in place. (This picture doesn’t show the snout finished like you just did. It should-I just took the pictures out of order.)

Then sew a satin stitch around the edge of each piece to hold them in place.

Now grab your ears orange ear pieces. Iron the inner ear to them and satin stitch around it. Right sides together, sew around the ears leaving the bottom open and turn them right side out.

Snip a small opening in the face of your towel to slide the ears through. Sew it closed from the underside. (Full pictures of this on the teddy bear post.)

Use a tight zigzag stitch again to sew your snout in place. This part can be tricky because you are sewing through a LOT of towel. Be careful. And use a heavy duty needle if needed.

Now cut out a few long stripes and sew them across the back using an appliqué (satin stitch) around the edges. Do as many stripes as you would like. I only did two because I was lazy. Three probably would have been better.

Finish your hood off based on these instructions.

Happy towel making! And be sure to check out all of the hooded towels!