Ok so Yesterday i made the apron for the outfit... and today i finaly made the ears!
Not too shabby right? I chose this lovely brown fuzzy material because it most closly matched my hair. I atached the finished ear to a hair clip and so the ears fit quite well.
And now for The Tutorial i supose:
How to make Semi-realistic cat/fox ears
Note: Ok just as a note to any one just stummbling across my blog, i am not a super sewing hero or anything, i have sub-par hand stitching skills and a decent amount of skill on the sewing machine. Anyone can make thease ears its not rocket science.
Also I am A Pure loving kimono Fan and i just want to be clear this is a kimono Blog and as such will probably never have a tutorial like this again.
Supplies:
at least two square feet of your fabric of choice (Fake fur works best but fleece can be used as well)
1 sheet of felt that closly matched your fabric
1 sheet of stiff felt, this is what will give your ears shape and a certain flexability you should be able to buy it at a craft store.
1 needle
1spool of thread that closly matches your fabric
scissors
Vacuum
1 sheet of paper
The one to the left is the normal felt the one to the right is the stiff felt you need to have one
Step 1: Cut out your pattern. I used some basic printer paper. The patern for the ear should be curved and not too pointy. I added a curve to the bottom so that it would fit the conture of my head better.
The second part of the pattern is the bottom ear liner, this helps keep your ear in the shape you desire.
If you wish to copy my pattern so be it but my tutorial should work for any similar pattern.
Note: make sure that the bottom liner pattern is a bit big
Step 2: Useing your pattern cut out the following amounts.
2 sets of the ear pattern (two for outer ear and two for inner ear)
2 of the bottom liner out of your same fabric as the inner ear
2 of bottom liner out of your floppy normal felt
and finaly two ear peices out of your stiff felt. here is what mine looked like:
As you can see the shiner of the two materials is my fake fur for the ears. the rest is some variation of felt.
Step 3: Take one set of iner and outer ear. thats one of each. Now Place them right side to right side, or in my case fur side to fur side and hand stich the whole length.
You could use a sewing machine but trust me hand sewing looks much better. Also Start at the top center of the ear and work your way down one side and then the other, this helps with symatry.
when you are done your ear should look like this:
Step 4: Turn your ear right side out, or fur side out like so:
Now i sugest you insert one of your stiff felt ear peices, it should be larger then the surounding fabric due to the fact that your fabric shrunk a little due to seams.
before trim
After the trim
Also don't forget to remove the stiff felt, if you leave it in its harder to sew.
Step 5: now take one of your bottom libner peices, it should be the the one made out of the same fabric as the inner ear:
First take the center and line it up like so:
As i said before start at the center, in this case start at the narrow part. work your way to one corrnor then tie it off and start in the ceter again.
Here i am half way sew on.
The second side can be a bit more difficult but don't worry too much.
when your done it should look like this:
Step 6: Make sure the fur sides are out. Now its time to insert your stiff Felt into the ear once more.
As you can see the ear now stands stright up on its own... but it does take a bit of wrestling to get the stiff felt in.
Note: you may need to trim again on the corners. also if you want to add any stuffing to the ear nows the time.
Step 7: your getting close to being done.
Now just to make it easier on ourselves before the last step do a wide and quick stitch to seal the pocket with the stiff felt.
Just quickly sew it shut, trust me it makes it easier on yourself.
Step 8 (the final step): Lastly sew on your soft felt, don't worry about visible stiches because its on the bottom, though this is why i sugest fake fur and not fleece.
When you get towards the outer edge of the bottom liner you may find you need to trim your felt, you should have the fur bottom liner visible for about 1 cm, fold/roll it in and sew the felt to it.
And you are done! your ear should look something like this:
And there you have it, from here you can sew or glue the ears onto clips, headbands, or anything else that will hold them in your hair.
I know this hasn't been the best tutorial but i hope it helped one or two people out there.
