make believe - animal ear headbands

The Little Miss is in need of more play things that help her use her imagination and promote pretend play. We don't have a lot of room for toys around our house so we don't have very many and I'm sorry to say that most of them are for babies, not toddlers. So I thought I'd whip up some make believe/dress up gifts to give her for Christmas this year.

 

(L to R: fox, monkey, cow, deer, lion, rabbit, pig, mouse, horse)

Ever since Halloween she frequently asks me to draw a dog nose on her with my eyeliner, so what better to go with a little black nose than animal ears? We tried them on today before they get wrapped up and she had a lot of fun!

I used freezer paper to more easily cut the felt shapes (just draw the shape on the freezer paper and lightly iron it waxy side down onto the felt, cut around it, and then peel it off - you can reuse the same freezer paper shape several times), and double stick fusible to adhere the fabric to the felt, then embroidered around the parts I wanted, and finally used the sewing machine to stitch around the outside edges. 

Then I used a glue gun to stick them to the headbands and I was really surprised how well they stuck! You have to pull really hard to get them off (I had to re-do a couple and ended up cutting them off because it was so hard to get them off). But, I was still a little paranoid that little hands would find a way, so I ended up using embroidery thread to secure them even more and also help hide the glue.

I hope we will make many fun memories playing with these! (And as an added bonus last minute Halloween costumes will be easy to come up with!)

Here are the materials I used:

- headbands (from Walmart)

- wool felt

- freezer paper

- vintage and scrap fabric

- feather boa for lion/horse mane

- double stick fusible

- embroidery floss

- glue gun