Sheep ears

Today I made sheep ears. I took pictures of the steps along the way, but I made so many mistakes it became hilarious. So this isn't the tutorial, its more of a show and tell of making the tutorial. However, if you are thinking about making sheep, you can think about the fabric selection and the ears are a good place to start. First, the background fabric needs to be very light. And the sheep eyes are going to be very dark, probably black. And to have contrast for the sheep, you need a medium light and medium dark that have enough contrast for the nine patch ears. They also have to stand out against the light background.

So the ears are made from 1.25 inch strips. I will give better instructions in the tutorial. You can see from this that I cut the large background squares too large. They should be 2 inch square instead of 2.5 inches.

So the nine patches have a strip of medium light fabric on the part of the ear closest to head. The large 2 inch square is put in the top corner and a flip triangle diagonal is sewn parallel to the diagonal of the nine patch. The small 1.25 inch background square is sewn as a flip triangle in the opposite corner.

The rest of the sheep is not that complicated. The ears aren't even that complicated, but they seem to give me the most trouble.

And speaking of trouble, I thought I would show you this photo again of the sewing machine attachments when they were first manufactured...that is, captured, collected in a cardboard box, and dropped off at the local animal shelter. And yes, those are four gray and white female kittens and one beige puppy that will grow up to be Buddy and not a sewing machine attachment.