Last minute project - Cold Weather Ear Warmers

I know, I know...I should have worked on these a month ago, but the weather was so unseasonably warm that I was ignoring the fact that I'd need to break out gloves, hats, and ear warmers.  When I did open up the dusty boxes containing all of my cold weather wear I realized that nothing I owned matched my cute new jacket.  What to do?  Well of course I scoured the web for items I could purchase, when I came across something I could make myself....thanks Pintrest.  (If you're not on Pintrest yet, don't do it!  You'll never get anything done, you'll just sit around wondering "why didn't I think of that" and "I could make that".)

Through Pintrest I found a young woman's blog in which one of her posts explains how to make these fun and easy ear warmers.  You can find it here: http://www.prudentbaby.com/2010/12/adorable-diy-ear-warmers.html#more

I'm not kidding you when I say that I made two in less than an hour.  You can buy the wool felt to match your own jacket and even make them for gifts.  Here's how mine went:

1.  My jacket is maroon and unfortunately we didn't have any maroon felt here at the quilt shop so I decided to match the colors to my scarf which is multi-colored with blue, yellow, maroon, and cream.....blue and mustard yellow were my favorites.

2.  Next I made a template out of freezer paper so that I could recreate the same design for another one later.  I also made templates for my flower layers (this will make more sense in a little bit).

 3.  I ironed the freezer paper onto my felt and started cutting.

4.  After my headband was cut out, I made a 1/4" seam around the entire thing.  This prevents it from stretching too much.  I also used the button hole setting on the machine to create buttons holes big enough for some fun wood buttons.

5.  I cut open the button holes and hand sewed a button on the opposite end.

5.  After I created the basic headband it came to the fun part....embellishments.  I decided to do layered flowers.  I also chose to use another button and make it the middle of my flower.  I hand sewed these embellishments on...and tad-ah a cold weather ear warmer.

6.  After I made the first one I wasn't sure how I felt about the width, so I made a smaller one.  I decided to do a bow embellishment for this one using both colors.

If you're interested in making these for yourself or others, I have the templates for the wide headband, narrow headband, and layer flowers saved on a PDF (the bow I kind of made up as I went along, just strips of felt folded into a bow).  Send me an email at commonthreadsmn@gmail.com and I'll email the PDF to you.