Puppy Ear Flap Hat - Crochet

Just a quick post. I wanted to show you my newest ear flap hat.  A puppy!  How cute is this face and floppy ears?

A sweet little puppy ear flap hat

It's seems that many of my friends are having babies this season.  Most have been girls, so I've done quite a few baby birds and giraffes, but I was invited to a baby shower for a baby boy and besides foxes, I soon realized I didn't have many boy ear flap hats in my arsenal.  I went in search of inspiration and found it in this picture by Ruth McColm (you can buy her full pattern over on etsy):

As always I used my own favorite ear flap hat pattern (link no longer available) but you can find a number of ear flap hat patterns for free on Pinterest.  For some parts such as the ears, I pieced together things I liked from different patterns to get the look I wanted.  I used the pattern for the ears from this pattern and I modified it a bit by reducing stitches near the top to narrow the ears so they would be wide and floppy at the bottom and smaller, easier to attach at the top

Puppy ear flap hat - how can you not love this face?

Here's all the parts before assembling. Ear flap hat, circle "patch" for the eye, two ears, a small nose, two buttons for the eyes and matching thread. 

After you have all the parts ready, I laid them out on the hat to find the best spacing for the puppy face.

It's always good to lay things out how they will look before hand so you can get the face placement correct

Then I attached each part with embroidery thread.  I like to sew these so that nothing shows on the inside of the hat.  I take shallow stitches that do not go all the way to the back and at the same time securing each part very snugly.  Especially the buttons, as you would not want those to come off for safety reasons.

After that my little puppy hat was completed, and I was almost sad to give him away the next day, as I usually like to keep one as a template for future hats.

  
Just so I could see how it would fit on a regular head, I had my 9-year-old try the hat on for size.  This was made at a 9-12 month size (the baby is born this spring and it will be ready to wear next winter), but since yarn is somewhat stretchy, it did fit on her head and would probably go up to a 2 or 3 year old toddler if the mom wanted it to.

By the way, the baby shower was fabulous, in case you want a sneak peek.  They did a very Pacific Northwest outdoors theme, with grey and white chevrons, with hints of black and woodsy elements.  Here were the center pieces, little tents on a slab of wood and mason jars filled with pens (for the games) and chocolate dipped pretzels.

Cute and woodsy

This play tent was set up over by the gift table, and will make a lovely play area for baby Duke as he grows up.

For favors, they had a "make your own trail mix" bar with little baggies and tin buckets with the different snacks of nuts, chocolate chips, and cranberries

The food was fabulous as well. My eldest daughter really loved this fruit ups served in waffle cups.

Love the waffle bowls use for serving the fruit cups

Last but not least were the woodland creatures for dessert.  These were little foxes and maybe skunks or badgers all displayed on a big slab of tree trunk.  So cute. 

Had I know this was the theme, I probably would have made my little fox ear flap hat instead, 

Little Jaxon here in one of my fox hat creations

 but I really like the way the puppy hat turned out. After Duke is born and grows up enough to wear the hat, I will post an update.