Sew a Penguin Hooded Towel

For now, I have an excellent guest post for you from Amber over at Crazy Little Projects, so check it out and then head over and say Hi to her!!  

Hello hello! It's Amber from Crazy Little Projects here so happy to guest post at Cherished Bliss (love this blog!). Every month I make an animal hooded towel (see them all here) and you get to be the first to see January's towel and learn how to make your own. And, if you don't sew, that's ok-I'd be more than happy to teach you in 7 easy lessons with my Learn to Sew series starting TODAY!!

Nothing says winter cold like a Penguin Hooded Towel! (In fact it was FREEZING outside when I took this picture so I used my 4 year old instead of my baby and had him wrap up tight.)

Do you like him? He's a little different than my other hooded towels, so it took a little tweaking to get him right. But he turned out pretty cute.

Penguin Hooded Towel Tutorial:

Supplies Needed:

1 regular size black bath towel

1 coordinating black hand towel

1 orange hand towel

Small amounts of white and black fabric

Fusing (like Heat N Bond)

Pattern Pieces

Start out by cutting your hand towel in half. Then, using the pattern pieces, cut out the face in white fabric and the eyeballs in black. Cut the fusing with the face pattern piece and eyeballs as well.

Grab your iron and adhere the white face part to the white fusing and the eyeballs to the eyeball fusing.

Then, place your white part on your towel so that it is centered side to side but a few inches up from the finished edge. Place your eyeballs where you want them and use your iron to iron them all in place: (trim your threads on your white piece better than I did-that was dumb of me)

Now you are going to applique around the white face and then black eyeballs.

Then, you need to fold the lower part of your towel down so that the bottom of the white is folded under an inch or two. Pin it in place and sew it in three places on the back to keep it in place. You will sew on either edge and in the middle, just make sure not to go over the part where you face is or you will have a line for your face:

On one side:

In the middle:

And on the other side:

Now, cut out a beak from your orange piece. You need two pieces:

Sew around the two long sides leaving the third side open. Turn it right side out and pin it in place on your towel:

Now do a nice wide zig zag stitch along the top of it to keep it firmly in place:

Your face is done! Now fold your towel in half so that the face is on the inside and zig zag up the raw edge to form the hood.

Now you just need to attach it to your towel. I like to form a little pleat like this:

Sew the pleat in place and then pin your head so that the seam of the back of the hood matches up with the center of the pleat you just made. Pin the head along the towel and then zig zag it in place. And you are done!

My 4 year old also wanted to demonstrate how penguins slide on the ice:

Also, join me for my Learn to Sew series: