Twelve Weeks of Homemade Gifts: Week Seven - EAR MUFFS!

Hello, welcome to your double dose of Homemade Gifts for the week!

Today, we're talking earmuffs:

Scroll to about :45 for the good part

This girl [delia creates] is the Pinterest guru of all things earmuffs. So naturally, I ran out to the fabric store, bought some fleece, and ended up with last week's horrible failure attempt:

Today's project also involves a sewing machine, but you can do without. Just go to the store and buy a plain fleece headband and scroll down until I start making a cute bow.

What you need:

1/2 Yard of Fleece (this will make about 5 or 6 earmuffs with extra for decoration)

1 Button

1 Hair Tie

Sewing machine, needle, thread, the usual suspects....

[Step One] Now, time to cut out your shape. I measured my head from my forehead to the brain stem [too anatomic? The corner of your neck and noggin.] This was about 25 inches--I have a huge head. So I wanted to make sure my 'finished' length [length after sewing the seams] was at least 25 inches. I grabbed a piece of big paper and measured 13 inches for the length. I want the thickest part to have a width of 5.5" and the thinnest part to have a width of 3.5 inches. So I made some measurements and it came out looking like this:

When I figure out how, I'll upload a pattern for you to download.
But you kinda get the picture here.

So I put the thickest end on the fold of my fleece and cut around the edges. My cut piece looks like this:

I'm horrible at cutting, which is why you see that bowed edge on the bottom.
Yours will not have that because you probably learned how to use scissors properly in Kindergarden. 

 Time to sew your seam along the long sides. Pin around the edge so you have about a half inch seam. A thicker seam is good for this because it will make your earmuff more sturdy:

Pins!

 Now, deep breath. Sewing machine time. Sew a straight line [yep] along your pins. I used a wider seam since fleece is kinda stretchy. I have no idea if there is any logic to this, but it worked really well for me.

YOU DID IT! Now, same thing, but on the ends:

YES!! We have a headband. Now, for the super fun part. Measure how big you want your beautiful bow to be. I decided I wanted mine to be the length of my pointer finger.

Cut a piece of fleece to your desired length and width. For a bow, I picked a piece that was about 4" wide and 12 inches long.

Fold the two ends to the middle [I believe this is called a barn door fold]

And bunch it together until you have something that looks like a cute bow:

Hand-sew the bow together. Start at the top of the bunch and straight down to the bottom. Do this really tightly so your bow keeps shape.

Now take a little scrap of fleece [1" wide or so] and wrap it around the middle. Sew the back together. Now you have a bow!

Take your pretty bow, and attach it to your headband. Put it wherever you want. I wanted mine to be a little off to the side, so I put the center about 8 inches from the end.

Make sure to sew each little corner of the bow in addition to the center knot.
This will make sure you won't have floppy ears hanging off your cute earmuff.

 Now, we're attached!

I have no clue how to sew a button. Zero clues ever. So I decided to attach this one similar to how we did our coffee sleeves a couple weeks ago.

Sew your cute button about 1.5" inches from the end.

Cut a hair-tie in half and sew that into the other end:

 AND YOUR'E DONE! And by done, I mean totally ready to make 5 more to finish off your half yard of fleece!

I made a million of these this weekend. Once I got the hang of sewing a stretchier fabric [like fleece] I was on a role. I made a yellow one with a double-bow [very similar to the one Delia made on her blog] that was a huge hit at the High School Youth Gathering I volunteered at this weekend:

This is my mentee, Luke.
He wore this all weekend.

I want to offer up a little help for anyone in the Portland Area that is intimidated with sewing: I will help you! Contact me via my email [on the side of the page] and we can set up a time for us to sew together! I'm no expert, but I'm a big believer in getting over the initial shock of using a sewing machine.