Monday Made: My little pony (Or, how to make a baby horse hood)

When I read that the awards ceremony was going to have a derby theme, I thought it'll be fun to let baby J have something horse-related to wear! We had this old brown t-shirt that has been worn by both the older boys, and I thought I could decorate the hood to make it look like a horse. 

A quick search on Pinterest yielded me photo after photo of crocheted horse hats that were really cute. I cannot crochet to save my life, so I eye-balled some of the pictures, and cut out shapes from Daiso felt (thankfully, I managed to find black and white felt in the cupboard, since this was a last minute project!). 

The muzzle was just a semi-circle cut from black felt. I added a white rectangle above that for the forehead. The eyes were just black and white circles, while the nostrils were buttons. These were hand-sewn down (gosh, the stitches were so messy!), since I thought I could make wide stitches which would mean poking less holes in the material.

I then added ears by cutting black felt into triangles, folding them into cone shapes and sewing them down. Then I added a shock of hair at the forehead by cutting a long narrow rectangle and sewing it down in the middle, and trimming the felt into strips.

Finally, the mane was just a large black rectangle that spanned the length of the back of the hood. It was sewn down the middle, then I just trimmed the whole sheet of felt into tiny strips.

Hand-sewing was a little tedious since I'm not good at it... but I did find it rather therapeutic sitting there slowly sewing, and seeing the horse take shape. I loved how baby J looked in it. Now I have a problem: I can't bear to take off all the felt, so I'm not sure how I'm going to wash this!