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I love a good pair of Minnie ears! I’ve made a few over the years and bought even more. On our last trip to Disneyland I finally saw my perfect set of ears. Finally ON A HAT! As much as I love wearing ears, I don’t wear them if I’m going to be at the parks all day because I’m usually wearing a hat/cap with a bill to blog my face and eyes from the California or Florida sun. Finally Disney came out with the cutest set of ears.
Right now they have 2 different Minnie ear hats and 1 Mickey ears. At first I wanted the Minnie Ears but then I started thinking about making my own Minnie Ear hat. Instead of making the entire hat I went and bought the Mickey hat and decided to come home and make my own bows for it. Besides, as much as I love Minnie, I’m not really a red- polka dot kind of girl. I DO love me a good neutral though 😉 The Mickey hat’s ears don’t stay up as well as Minnie’s but that’s ok because our interchangeable bows hold them up perfectly!
The biggest problem I had when figuring out how to make my own puff bow was the pattern. I could NOT Find a pattern anywhere for a Minnie type bow that was stuffed so I had to draw and test my own. After several tries I think I have it and I’m sharing it here with you so you don’t have to go through the same thing.
Here’s what you’ll need to make your own Minnie Ears Hat with Interchangeable Puff Bows:
- Mickey Mouse Ears Baseball Cap or if you love polka dots and don’t mind removing the bow already on you can get the Minnie Ears.
- Fabric (I purchased “Fat Quarter” sizes to make sure I had enough for the bow, the center of the bow and extra just in case)
- Velcro
- Ball Point Pins
- Safety Pins
- Fiberfill
- My free bow template
- My free bow template
- Your preferred method of creation – sewing machine, fabric glue, or even hot glue
HOW TO MAKE A MINNIE EARS HAT WITH INTERCHANGEABLE BOWS
Ok let’s get right into it! To start you’ll want to print out the free bow template and cut that piece out. If you have a patterned fabric figure out how you want to cut out your bow.
Fold the fabric and pin the template on with the straight side against the fold.
Cut around the template with sharp scissors.
Repeat for the back side of the bow.
Stack the two pieces with the “good side” of the fabric facing in. Make sure that the pattern is right side up.
Pin the pieces together and with a fabric marker (or pencil like I used) draw a line about 1/4″ in to use as a guide for sewing or glueing. This helped me a TON with the look of the end product.
You can use fabric glue or even a glue gun here if you don’t want to sew. It will definitely turn out (I tried it) the end look of the bow was “cleaner” with sewing, but if you draw a pencil guide and don’t add too much glue it should work great. Just make sure to leave an opening at the bottom.
Sew around the bow leaving at least a finger space open at the bottom of the bow.
Turn the bow inside out using the eraser side of a pencil to push all the corners out completely.
Next, stuff that bow good! You’ll likely need more stuffing that you originally thought!
Sew or glue the bottom shut.
At this point all that’s left is adding the middle part of the bow. Cut a strip of fabric, iron the edges in and sew or glue it onto the back as tight as you like. This is where the safety pins came in handy for me to hold the piece on.
Now we’re ready to place the bow on the hat. Cut 3 small velcro pieces. Attach the SOFT side of the Velcro to the hat. Velcro the harder part onto the soft part and then place the bow onto the sticky end of the velcro. This helps the Velcro go on just the right spot. Then, secure the Velcro in place by sewing or glueing.
For each additional bow you’ll just want to add new pieces of the “hard” part of the velcro to the hat, remove the sticker for the adhesive, stick your bow on and then secure.
I hope that all makes sense!
Now you can make as many bows as you’d like! You can also make different panels for the ears to velcro on. I’m headed to the store later today for some more fabric. Thinking maybe a rose gold and a Toy Story bow might be perfect for my next trip.
2 Comments
Have you gotten to test how well the bows stay in place on rides?
Yes! They held up well. The only one that had an issue was one with the velcro “off” a bit but it was easily fixed by re-placing the velcro. The bows actually help hold up the ears.