#earmuffs

Materials:

- Scissors

- Faux Fur (or real fur, you do you)

- Headband

- Sewing Needle

- Thread

- Hot Glue + Glue Gun

- Ribbon/Buttons/assorted embellishments

- Stuffing/Scrap Fabric (optional)

- Felt (also optional)

- Wire Pet Brush (also also optional)

So when picking a size circle to cut out of your fur you need to keep a few things in mind; fur length and whether you want to engulf your ears or not. For mine I just used a scotch tape roll to mark out my circles since it would cover my ear.

If you have fur that is longer it will make the finished shape look bigger than the circle size you picked and if you want to have a proper over the ear muff (similar to over ear headphones) you'll need a bigger circle. For this tutorial I didn't make an over ear style which does mean that the flushness of the earmuffs depends on the headband and whether or not you put in a circle of felt or not.

Step One:

Mark out on the back of your fur 4 circles. Direction doesn't matter just yet so don't worry. With your scissors slide them close to the back fabric and make small snips so that you cut the back fabric and don't cut the front fur too much, wouldn't want any chopped bangs on our muffs would we? Once cut out I actually recommend using a wire pet brush to brush out the fur around the edges to remove any loose fur. If you don't work with fur much I wouldn't worry though, pinching and pulling gently works fine too :] Once cut out you should have pieces like this;

Step Two:

Now is the time to orient the fur the right way so what you want to do is look at how the fur flows. In the above image you can see how the fibres flow downwards but on some furs it can be a little hard to figure out which way it goes (here is where brushing it can help.) Make a mark at the top of the circle where the fur starts to flow downwards like shown below:

Step Three:

Now is the more fiddly bit. Grab your sewing needle and thread and put two circles fur side to fur side with the markings lining up at the top. Then just start sewing a blanket stitch all the way around the edges while making sure all fur is tucked inside and there is an opening at the top roughly an inch wide. Once done you should get a little puff pad like this:

Now flip inside-out! (This can be a little fiddly and depending on the strength and closeness of your stitches can break the thread.) Repeat this process with the two other circles and boom you got yourself two fluffy pockets!

Step Four:

This bit is extra tricking and may have elicited a few profanities from me so I wish you the best of luck as well. Now hold up your little fluffy pocket against the headband and put it on to get a general vibe of how far up the band it should go, if you have a contrasting marker I'd make a mark on the headband. So if you want a flatter inside (part that sits against your head) you can cut out a circle of felt slightly smaller than the circle you used before and glue it to the headband first before sliding the pocket on over it. I didn't do that but I can imagine some people might prefer a flatter inner piece so the rest of these instructions assume you're not using felt. Anyways whip out your hot glue and put some glue on the INSIDE of the headband and press that into one of the sides of the pocket. (It's important to make sure that you don't accidentally glue both sides together here like I initially did.)

Step Five:

If you would like them to be more 3D you can stuff them now with either actual stuffing or just scrap fabric like I did. Note: Using the felt circle actually makes the stuffing stay mostly on the outer bit so you get more of that half dome look.

Last bit of hand stitching I swear! Now you gotta close the bad boy and a simple stitch works fine here too. I can imagine hot glue could also work with closing this bit just fine too.

Final Step!

Last step! Unless you're happy with it as is you can start embellishing it now! I went with glueing a ribbon onto the headband and a little lace rosette one side with a little heart locket on it. Note: If you're gluing ribbon or lace onto the headband keep in mind that hot glue will like an impression in the ribbon which you can kind of see in the pictures. Not quite sure what other types of glues would work well enough without ruining ribbon.

Anyways you're all done! Yayyy! Good job everyone, go get yourself a biscuit :3