I don’t know about anyone else, but my daughter is completely obsessed with animals. Lucky for me, she also loves the Jolly Roger Raglan- so it was a natural choice to put an animal face on a raglan for her. Raglans are an essential piece of her fall wardrobe and such a great style on girls or boys and now with the Add-on pack you have so many more options but it’s still fun to add some character to the front. The shape of the raglan sleeve are perfect for fun details like animal ears so we have created 2 different ear options and 5 animal faces for you- a kitty, panda, fox or deer, and pirate puppy! You can find the face file and ear pieces here.

Here is a quick tutorial on what to do!

First we are going to cut 4 of whatever ear option you are choosing (2 pieces for each ear). You can mix and match as you choose, we had quite the discussion on what ear belongs to which animal and we are still undecided on if a raccoon has rounded or pointed ears so we are going to leave it to you to decide!  I used a fairly heavy weight cotton lycra on my ears but if you are using a thinner knit you may want also want to use interfacing on your ears (if so, cut your interfacing and iron it on now).  Next we are going to take our ears and place right sides together, then sew with a 1/4 inch seam allowance around our ear leaving the bottom straight edge open.  I like to trim my seam allowance down with my pinking shears but you can also make tiny clips around your curve.  Turn your ears right side out and press them well.  You can top stitch your ears if you would like, I chose not to top stitch mine.

Next we are going to take our front piece and line up our ears.  I placed the edge of the kitty ear 1.5 inches down from the top of the shoulder on a size 5.  With the rounded ear I would move it farther down just a tad, I placed my panda ear at 1.75.  You may want to move your ear up a bit on the smaller sizes or down a bit on the larger sizes, do whatever you like but be mindful of the 0.5 inch seam allowance on the neckband as you don’t want to place your ear too close to the top and sew it into your neckband.  Once you have your ear placed on your front add your sleeve pin or clip in place and repeat on the other side.  Sew your sleeves into your front piece and continue construction as normal.  TIP: before your attach your neck band iron all your seams, you want your seams where your ears are placed to point towards the shirt and not the sleeve, it makes a huge difference on keeping your ears standing up!  Once you’ve finished your shirt, if your ears are wanting to fall forward just tack them in place on the top of each ear.  I just pinned them in place and did a couple stitches on my machine. Or you could stitch them all the way around onto your sleeve, completely up to you.

Now you just need to iron on your vinyl!  This again, is a personal choice. I like my face fairly high on the shirt but others like it lower. Don’t have a way to cut vinyl, that’s OK! You can cut the pieces out of fabric and applique them on, add buttons for eyes, rick rack for whiskers… just have fun with it!

Go sew a bunch of animal faced raglans and let your inner animal out! Happy sewing and as always post your creations in the Patterns for Pirates Group- we are excited to see what your create! Don’t forget to tag your posts #p4praglanweek

P.S. Another quick tip, the kitty face raglan below is more of a tunic length, but you will see that is not an included option in the pattern.  A quick way to achieve a tunic length for girls is by adding the band to the hemmed length! Quick, easy and gives you one more cute option.