A Little Bunny Ear Tutorial

*This was created specifically for a special someone.  But read on if you're interested!*

I cannot get enough of these little guys.  Cutest teethers ever.

I found them on Etsy.  Two of these four I bought and two I made.  I just untied one and cut out a pattern.

  

The backs of the ones I bought were organic flannel.  But I'm sure you can use just about any material you would like.

This is my tutorial on just how I went about this little endeavor.   There are a lot of pictures so I am keeping them all small to save space.  Just click on them for a larger view.

Also, I am by no means a professional and I am sure there are a million other (probably better) ways to do these things.  But this is how I know it. :o)

Here is what you'll need:

 an iron

a good sharp pair of sewing scissors

pins

thread and matching bobbin

material for front and back

wooden teething ring (I got mine here)

 This step is optional:

This is crinkle paper.  I got mine here.  But after I bought this I found that you can also find it here.

I've heard that you can also just use a cut up chip bag, but I wasn't sure if that is washable or if it had any chemicals that would be harmful for a baby to chew on.  So I went ahead and just bought some that was "pre-approved" for baby toys.

Let's talk grain.

Just like meat and wood, fabric has a grain.  If you pull on the material diagonally to the grain it has more stretch.  This will affect the outcome of your project.

Here is a swaddle blanket with a very loose weave so you can easily see the grain in it.

This is the material I am going to use.  The pins are running along the grain so you can see.

Here's how I made my pattern.  I ironed out the bunny ears that I bought on Etsy and just cut 1/4" away from it all the way around to allow for sewing my seams together. (also known as 'seam allowance')

If I have no guide to work off of (like the toy that I just bought and copied) I will just take a piece of paper, a pencil, a ruler, lots of eraser, and draw out exactly what I want.  No bigger, no smaller.  My end vision.  Then after I have it drawn, I will go around the exterior of the picture and make marks 1/4" away from my lines and cut there.  That becomes my pattern piece.

However, a pattern is the easiest way to make anything.  You don't really have to measure things out quite so much and all you do is cut where they say to cut and sew where they say to sew.

I made you a pattern. 

It will be in the mail soon.

:o)

But for tutorial's sake, here is how I go about making a pattern.

Pencil

Ruler

Tracing paper

Hard surface

I like to decide how wide I want my product to be and make little marks.

(in this case I already knew how wide to make it so I didn't have to go over it again to make a seam allowance)

Then I decide how long I want it to be and try to draw a line as straight as I think it should be.

In this case, I have drawn a line that is half the length of my bunny ears because I am going to cut on the fold to double it.  This will also help me get perfectly straight cuts.

I like to use three points when I measure things out.  You can see the tiny little marks at the top.  It helps me make sure that the lines end up as straight as can be.

Once I have my two side lines drawn I double check to make sure my width is the same all the way down.  I check in at least three places.

If your widths are not all even (mine miraculously ended up being pretty dead on)  No big deal just make a new mark and straighten out the line.

Then I draw my top and bottom lines as straight as I can.

 And measure those to see how close (or not) I was.

Then fix. :o)  I have also drawn a little 'x' in the center for the point of my bunny ear to go.

I also drew a line for where I wanted the slope to begin and just free-handed a curve.

To make sure it ends up symmetrical I fold the pattern in half

 (making sure my lines are lined up, not the edges of the paper)

The great thing about tracing paper is I can see through it.  My slope was not too far off!  But I had to adjust it a little bit.  Then I cut it out while it was still folded.

Voilà!  Pattern done!

I already had my top piece cut out so I am going to show you on the backing material.  This is that super soft minky stuff.  It's a little on the pricey side, but I over-bought for my quilt and ended up with a bunch extra so that's where all my baby toys have been coming from.  Yay for scraps!

Speaking of scraps.  It is ideal to use as little of your material as possible for each thing you make.  So where you lay your pattern on your fabric is a big deal.  This (below) is wrong for two reasons.

1.  It is not on the fold

2.  It is in a random center place on the fabric.

I want it as close to the edge as possible.  If you are wondering why my material is folded crooked there is a reason.  I wanted my grain line to be headed the same way all the way down so the finished project didn't look crooked. (something I neglected to do on my quilt...oh well.  That just makes it unique, right?)

Then pin that guy right on!

*heads up: this minky fabric is really weird.  It's super stretchy and does weird things which you will see later.  I would suggest starting with flannel or just plain cotton so you don't have the problems that stretchy fabrics bring to the party.*

Cut it out!  

(if you are dumb like me, you do it on the carpet sometimes.  Be careful to just cut your fabric and not your carpet....  

I'd love to be able to say I don't know that from experience.)

See how much fabric I still have?  Just a little corner gone.

Challenge number one of minky fabric.  Pinning the pattern on made it bunch up a bit and my back ended up being a bit bigger than my front.  This can kind of happen with any fabric and pattern pinning though.   But it seems to be worse with this fabric.

No big deal.  Just trim it down to the same size as the front piece.

I have found it a bit easier to work with this minky fabric if I use some iron on interfacing.  Takes a little bit of the stretch away.

Iron on interfacing has two sides.  The bumpy side is the "glue".  It will go against your fabric.  If you buy interfacing make sure you get the kind that only has one glue side and is not "sew on".  Makes life a whole lot easier.

When you cut it out you don't have to be that exact.  I don't even pin it on.

I use a piece of paper over the fusing to iron it on.

(I basically destroyed our last iron and had to buy a new one the other day so I want to preserve this guy as long as possible.  I should probably replace my ironing board cover too.  I apologize for the disgusting-ness of it.  I guess that's what a 9 year old ironing board cover should look like though...)

The crinkle material will take the difficulty of this project up one notch.  So leave it out if you are just trying this out for the first time.  But here is how to do it.

Again, don't have to be accurate.  I don't pin it down to cut it.

You want the crinkle material about 1" wider than your fabric.

Then pin it on to the edges.  The goal is to NOT have it lay flat.  There is a lot of puckering 

(when you get little folds in you fabric as you sew)

and it shrinks a bit with heat.

I start pinning on the ends first and then the middle on the sides and then I just divide each section until I have what I think are enough pins to get me through the sewing without wanting to rip my arm off in frustration.

You can *almost* never have too many pins.

I am going to assume you know how to thread your own sewing machine.

I am not going to assume that you use these guide lines.  If you don't, you should start.  They are very helpful.

I really think they make the difference between 

"oh where did you buy that?!" 

and

"oh gosh.  She must have made that..."

I have found with my sewing machine that if I move my needle all the way to the right then the edge of my presser foot is exactly 1/4".  This little discovery has kept my sewing pretty consistent lately.  I had a larger project that went beyond all my guide marks so I literally took a sharpie and drew a little mark onto my sewing machine.  I think you can see just a glimpse of it on the right in this next picture.

:oP

Line your material up to your machine as you need to and sew around the outside of the crinkle material to tack it down.  This step *can* be skipped if you really know what you're doing and have a great skill for sewing.  This is not me.  I'd rather take the extra step.  I'm not that good.

Stitch backwards over the first and last 2-3 stitches to make sure it stays secure (you should back-stictch the first and last few stitches every time you sew something.  It will keep the stitches from falling out a bit).

When you get to the tips of the ears you can keep your needle down and lift your presser foot up so you can twist your fabric around to the next direction and not lose your place.  I hope that makes sense.  It was hard to get a picture of that....

When I was younger I used to leave all my long threads hanging off until I was done with the project.  Do yourself a favor.  Don't do that.  Cut them close every time you take your material out of the machine.  It will make your life so much easier.

It is helpful if you make your stitches on the crinkle material as straight as possible but it will not ruin the project if you are off a little.  This is just getting it to stick to the fabric.  These stitches will be hidden inside when you are done.  Mine are not so straight...

If your crinkle material looks like this when you are done, you are on the right track.  It should not lie flat to your fabric.

If you skipped the crinkle material, here is where you need to start reading again.

Pin your top and bottom piece together so that the right sides of the fabrics are touching.

Here we go with that darn minky fabric again.  By ironing the fusing onto the minky fabric, it stretched out a little.  So my back ended up being a bit bigger than my top.  I went ahead and trimmed it up so it would be easier to sew a straight line around the edge.

You will want to leave a little 2"-ish opening in the ears so you can turn it inside out.

I like to do a little double pin to remind myself of where to stop sewing in case I am brainlessly stitching around the thing and end up sewing it completely together.  Also, make sure when you are sewing these pieces together you keep your stitches on the inside of your stitches used to sew the crinkle paper down.  If you get to the next step and flip your project inside out and you can see your crinkle fabric stitches, you have stitched either too close to your previous stitches or on the wrong side.  flip it again and adjust accordingly.

Here is my opening where I reach inside and pull the fabric out to flip it around.

Iron it down flat.

I like to use a chopstick to push all the seams out as far as they can go while I iron it.  They have tools you can buy for this, but a chopstick seems to work perfectly fine!

Here is my opening.  I need to iron down the fabric to match the rest of the edges.  It should end up being about 1/4" fold.

I pin my opening closed so it gets stitched down the way that I want it to end up looking.  You can actually pin around the whole project one more time so you don't end up getting puckers in the fabric. (mine would've probably turned out better if I had done this) but it is not completely necessary.

Top stitch around your project as straight as you can 

(these stitches matter because they will be seen on your finished product) 

Fold your ears in half and put them through the ring and then loop them through the bottom.

DONE!