Make a Panda Bear Hooded Towel

My son loves panda bears (love panda bears, too? You might like my panda party, panda ears tutorial or panda pancakes). Now that he's 2 and huge, he needed some bigger towels for bath time. What better creature to make a hooded towel like than his favorite snuggly panda?

I followed the same technique taught by Amber at Crazy Little Projects. If you have never made a hooded towel, do yourself a favor and read her very thorough tutorial. Then come back here and see how to adapt it to make a panda.

Supplies

• White bath towel
• White hand towel
• Black bath towel
• Black washcloth
• Fusible Interfacing (I used Heat'n Bond Lite Iron-on Adhesive)
• Matching thread
• Sewing machine, scissors, iron, Walking Foot if you have one.

Cut list:
White hand towel: Cut in half across the narrow width
Black bath towel: Cut off the top third of the towel across the longest width of the towel
Black washcloth: Cut out 4 ear shaped pieces (remember to cut them bigger than you need them). Then iron on the fusible interfacing to the remaining washcloth material. Cut out two kidney bean shaped pieces for eye shadows and a nose.

Hood

1. Fold in the front edge of the towel past any band that might be on the towel. Using white thread, sew across. This is the front edge of your hood.
2. Switch to black thread. Stitch around the curve of the ears, leaving the flat edges open. Flip ears so stitches are inside.
3. Iron down the eye patches and nose. Use a zig zag stitch to applique these pieces to the hood.
4. Cut slits in the hood where you want the ears to go. Insert ears and sew to hood from the inside.
5. Fold hood in half down the middle of the face, right sides together and sew with white thread.

(Are these instructions not making sense? They assume you're familiar with basic hooded towel construction. Be sure to read Amber's great hooded towel tute if you haven't yet.)

This is what your finished hood should look like:

Body

1. Placing right sides together and being sure to line up any bands on the narrow ends of the towels, lay the long black bath towel strip along the long edge of the white bath towel . Sew together and open. 
2. To keep the seam flat, I opened up the back side of this seam and stitched down the length of the towel on both sides.
3. Make a tuck along the top edge of the black section and pin in place (refer to Amber's tutorial).
4. Center the hood seam to line up with the tuck and sew, attaching the hood to the body of the towel

Enjoy!

Panda Party Wrap Up

We had so much fun at our panda party this weekend. Thank you so much to all of our awesome friends who came out to celebrate one full year with our sweet little panda.  Here's a wrap up of what we did:

Invitations

I made this invitation using a panda graphic I found online. I made them a 4 x 6 size so I could take advantage of online deal for "photos" and print them as a "photo" from Walgreens (there are always promos running on photography websites so check the usual suspects like snapfish, shutterfly, etc.). Custom invitations for the price of generic fill-in-the-blank ones from Walmart?  Winning!