Hooded Horse Towel Tutorial

So as I posted before in the post from Wallace's birthday I made a hooded towel! I am really excited about it cause it turned out awesome :D

My older sister gave Theodore a hooded towel for his 2nd birthday and Wallace has loved it. So as the boys were bathing a while back I started looking at it and decided it would be a piece of cake to make one just like it. Since Wallace loves horses I decided on a horse hooded towel.

So here we go!

You will want a full size towel (Color of your choice. I chose dark brown)
Same color of hand towel.
3 wash cloths (Black for the hair and hoofs. and White for the nose)
2 large buttons.
And I will talk about the eyes later on :)

 I started with the head of course. I took the towel that already existed and placed it over the hand towel seeing that it was a half circle, I taped 2 8x10 pieces of paper together and traced around the half circle. This will be easy enough with out something to trace, the circumference of the circle was almost as wide as the hand towel so I left some there to allow for seam allowance. Make sure to fold the hand towel in half (hamburger style lol I feel like I am in 3rd grade again!) and place the pattern on the free edge side. (You don't want your semi circles to be connected :D ) and cut around your pattern. You will now have 2 half circle pieces that are separate.

The semi-circle pattern

All cut out. Notice how cutting it on the free edge gives you a finished edge already!

 Next I started on the nose and eyes. (Note the eyes are pictured in this part but I did change my mind later on and changed them.) I drew a half circle on a piece of paper and drew in some nostrils, and then cut it out and placed on the hand towel. I wanted to make sure it looked right before I went ahead and started cutting. I liked the size so I went ahead and cut it out from the white wash cloth. I placed that piece on the hand towel with my large brown buttons just to get a look of it before I went to the sewing machine.

You may notice that there are white specs of towel all over my project. Towels when cut fray really bad so I went ahead and hemmed the white nose. I went ahead and sewed the nose on top of 1 half circle, and hand sewed the buttons in place.

Next I did the hoofs which sadly I did not picture how I cut them out. What I did was take 1 of the black wash cloths and place it over a corner of the towel (Make sure you are using the two top corners when the towel is unfolded and your looking at it landscape style.) and then decide how large you want to make the "pocket". I did mine pretty small as he is still little. And then cut out 2 triangles and hem the raw edge. Place back over the top of the corners of the towel and sew the perimeter of the triangle leaving and opening for their hand.

 

You can see that I left the hypotenuse of the triangle open for the hand.

Now you will want to do the ears. Mine were a kind of trial and error and I will just tell you how it ended up. The drawings that I made were much too long and I didn't like them so I made them shorter and ended up with something about 2.5 inches long and 2 inches wide. You will want to cut out a piece of white and a piece of brown (using part of the hand towel and part of the white wash cloth.) Sew the wrong sides together and turn inside out. 

Make sure to attach them while sewing the 2 large half circles together. Otherwise you will end up picking out the thread to make room for them like I did. -Aren't you glad I went through all the mistakes for you!?- Make sure the white side of the ear is showing with the nose of the horse otherwise your ear will be backward. Pin in place with the head and sew wrong sides together.

Haha notice how I didn't think of adding the ears before sewing the head together?! I had to go back and unpick some stuff to get it right! But it all turned out in the end.

Now as for the hair. I knew that towels would fray really bad but I had already bought the extra black wash cloth and didn't want it to go to waste. But I put my project away for a few days so I could decide on how to do the hair. I knew a over-lock machine is what I needed if I wanted to use the towel so I called my old sewing teacher up and asked if I could come over and use hers. ( I so wish I had one! It would have made this whole project easier lol. But we have to make do with what we have!) I spent about a half hour cutting out the hair and over-locking the sides of them. I made sure that no sides were left raw. I used the other half of the black wash cloth that I had already cut into for the hooves, and I cut the other one in half and used half of that for the hair as well. I cut them into 1.5 inch strips. Then folded them in half to create a loop. I did all this before I left her house. When I got home I turned the strips right side out so I could sew them on top of the hood of the towel.

 I placed one piece of hair on the front part of the head making sure that the loop was going up and down not sideways. I then just lined up the rest and pinned them into place. I sewed on the inside of the hair so it would stand up right instead of laying to one side. It was kind of hard to figure out in the beginning but it got easier. Just do what works for you. I ended up using 6 pieces of hair.

It is hard to see because of the color of the fabric but I am trying to sew to the inside of the hair. Try folding the top part down and out of the way as much as possible.

I wanted to do a tail. So while I was at the over-lock machine I went ahead and took the other half of the black wash cloth and sewed the sides together. length wise At home I folded the big towel in half and attached the tail about 3/4 way down. Just make sure the tail doesn't hang lower than the towel.

Now to attach the head to the large towel. Fold the towel in half and find the middle, put a pin there and do the same to the head. Pin the middle of the head to the middle of the towel. Then unfold both pieces and both ends of the head to the big towel. Sew along the hemming making sure to reinforce each end.

Now remember when I cut those eyes out? Well I knew that there was no way I was going to able to hem them or use the over-lock for it. I spent those few days trying to decide what to do for the eyes. I didn't have any buttons that would work and I wanted some white on there. In the end I crocheted the eyes. I did a circle of 8 half double crochet stitches for the black, and 2 rounds of the same for the white (ending up with 16 total stitches for the white.) I attached the black part to the lower part of the white and then hand sewed the eyes onto the hood.

Now if you do not have a over-lock and don't have access to one I suggest using some fabric that doesn't fray. It would have made the whole eye problem go away too. Maybe some felt or something of that nature.

But that is the finished project. Wallace loved it and really bad wants me just let him run around the house in his horse towel so he can really be a horsie :)

Yay for my 1st tutorial! Feel free to message me about any questions you might have :)