What Does The Fox Say? Lacy n Lane Hooded T Converted to a FOX Tutorial

Posted by Angelyn Bennett on January 16, 2014

What Does The Fox Say??

Lacy and Lane Slope Hooded T-Shirt Converted to Fox (or any animal) Hoodie

by Kristi Krueger of Josie Beth of FB and ETSY.

My youngest daughter is obsessed with the fox song. She was wearing her sisters old skelanimals costume from a few years ago to dance to the song. The costume was actually of a cat and it had black feathers all around the hood. She has Autism is nonverbal and has sensory issues. She HATED the feathers and would bring it to me barely pinching the mesh part of the costume to have me help her put it on without touching the feathers. I decided I needed to make her a hoodie with a tail and ears that actually looked like a fox and one that she could put on herself and since its winter and cold here in NW Indiana fleece was the material of choice!

Since I used fleece for my fox hoodies so I sized up by one for the entire hoodie, and sized the width out by two sizes. Fleece was all prewashed so there would be no unexpected shrinkage after they were done! Also for the sleeves I didn’t taper them down as much. So from about mid sleeve down they were cut parallel to my fold. (My daughter is usually about a 6x, 6/7 so I sized up to a 7/8 but used the width of the 9/10 for the body of the shirt.)

Download the Pattern Pieces for the Tail and the Ears here.

You will cut out all pieces according to size choices except for the sleeve bands (you can skip those for now). You will not be cutting out the slope option. This will be the straight hem option. And you will need to cut out two hoods (one will be the liner), two tail pieces of main fabric, 4 ears of main fabric (make sure you are cutting across the greatest stretch for ears and tail). You will also need to cut out the white portion for the ears (make sure you cut two opposite pieces) and tail tip from either white fleece or white felt. **** Pay no attention to the white part of the tail in this pic its sitting on the wrong end of the tail!! Later you can either cut the cuffs according to the pattern to make with thumb holes or just cut according to the directions I will provide along with the bottom band.

Next we will be cutting the outer hood so that we can tuck our ears in them. I line up the liner hood pieces on top of the hood pieces that I’m going to cut so that I can keep the angle on the edge right. You will be cutting about 2in from the outer edge of the outer hood pieces.

Next you will pin and stitch the white parts of the ears onto the ears. I center the white pieces and stitch on to the right sides of your ear pieces. The white part that is straight is now attached to what we will consider the bottom of the ear.

Place RST and you will be pinning and stitching the top two portions of the ear. Leave the bottom of the ears OPEN.

Clip corners and turn RSO.

You will be adding a tiny bit of stuffing to make them plushie prior to adding into the hood.

Sew or serge the hood liner RST, and also the outer portion of the hood and the tiny strip you cut from the outer hood you will serge/sew at just the top for now.

Next you will lay out your outer hood pieces. Your ears have been stuffed with a small amount of stuffing. You will measure 1.5in from the center seam to place the edge of your ears. Pin and stitch into place.

Then you will pin the strip edge of the hoodie RST on the edge of the hoodie piece matching ends and center seam. Serge or sew into place.

You should then have this for your outer hood piece.

Because of seam allowances you can cut your liner front edge by the seam allowance or just leave it, it’s not a huge deal in the overall look.

Place the two hoods RST one inside the other and sew/serge the outer edge. Flip RSO and top stitch the outer edge. Sorry for the horrible pic. I didn’t realize it was blurry until I went to use it now!

(pinning hoods RST)

(just to show how hoods are now connected)

Tuck liner inside of hood.

Top stitched outer edge.

Now sew the sleeves and front and back of the shirt pattern together as in the pattern.

Stitch hood to the shirt as in the pattern except you will have two layers of hoodie to pin and stitch to the neck opening.

Now we make the tail!

Stitch the white portion of the tail to the RS of one of the tail pieces. I used two pieces of white felt stacked on top of each other bc my felt was kind of thin.

Place the other tail piece on top RST, pin and stitch around all around leaving the top straight portion open for stuffing!

Clip corners and turn RSO making sure to push out the tip of the tail.

Add a small amount of stuffing. This ended up being a little much but it still worked out ok.

side view with stuffing.

Find the center of your tail end and center of the back of your hoodie, pin centers together, RS of tail laying on the RS of hoodie back straight edges matched, baste.

tail flipped down and basted in place. ^^^^^^^

Next measure the width of the bottom opening of the shirt. Mine was about 14in across (28in total) and also the sleeve openings. Mine were about 4in across (so about 8in).

You will cut a band for the bottom that is only a few inches shorter of your bottom opening. I cut my bottom band at 24in by 5in tall) Make sure you cut so that the greatest stretch is with the 24in. Sew/serge the short ends together. Fold the circle of fabric on itself so that you have a band of fabric.

Mark it into 4ths and do the same with the bottom of the shirt, matching the quarters and making sure that your seam from the band is centered under the tail. Sew or serge the band onto the shirt. You will need to stretch the band to fit the bottom of the shirt as you go.

Sleeve Cuffs….if you choose not to use the thumb hole ones from the pattern you can use these.

For my bands I cut 5in x7.5in pieces. Stretch is greatest with the 7.5in. Sew/serge the 5in sides together. And you will then add the cuffs to the sleeves in the same manner as the bottom band on the shirt. Fold the circle on itself, mark the quarters and match to the sleeves quarters (that you will also mark) …to be honest with the sleeves I just mark halves bc the openings are so small. Match the cuff seam to the sleeve seam.