Funky Fleecy Robot Scarf

When the weather turned cold after christmas, my 2 year old saw my scarf and wanted a scarf of his own. The boy loves robots (who doesn't!) and I had a vision of a cute little robot decorating his new scarf. I had some leftover brown fleece and a piece of white fleece felt, and some embroidery thread, so I figured, why not prototype it out and see what I could come up with!

After much trial and error, and an evening's work, this is the result. The Claude-Bot* Scarf!
I figured others could take this idea and do even more with it, so I'm posting it here...

As you can see, he was thrilled with it!

*why Claude-bot? Doesn't this bot just look like a "Claude"?

Fleece--whatever color you like-- I'd start with at least 6 in of width available, depending on the weight of the fleece. You'll cut it down in step 4 to the width you want.
For this project I chose a thick brown fleece leftover from halloween. Since this was a kids scarf, I just made the length the width of the bolt, about 4 feet. For an adult scarf, you would want to do longer, maybe double that.

Fleece felt square (or regular felt) in the color you want to make your robot.
I had found some white fleece felt squares at the craft store, so that's what I used. If you can't find fleece felt I'm sure you can do this with a thin piece of fleece, or with regular felt.

Embroidery floss, multiple colors.
For this prototype, I used lime green for the robot features, gold for the border, and white for his arms. In retrospect, I think I darker color than lime green would have worked better for more contrast.

I sketched around with possible robots for this, needing something relatively simple.

I've included in this Instructable the pattern I came up with, feel free to use it.
Pattern here on Flickr

One alternate way of doing it would be to use the same pattern, but actually make the legs similar to the arms, with stitched legs and felt circles for feet.

Cut out the Body and Hands from the white felt.
Either freehand it, or cut out the pattern, pin to your felt, and cut on the solid lines. Fleece can be hard to cut straightly, but don't worry if it isn't totally perfect.

Then, stitch on the robot face and buttons on the body with embroidery thread, generally following the pattern provided. (Don't sew the white to the brown yet)

Note- this is not a instructable on how to embroidery--i'm sure there are some out there! Or the commenters may can provide the proper way to do this (My untrained method was to do even stiches then go back and stitch the other direction to make a contiguous line.)
The pattern shows how the stiches should look, but you'll note mine didn't actually come out that way. I contend this is intentionally a funky, silly robot, and perfect stitching would not fit the look!

Cut the brown fleece into a scarf width, slightly larger than the robot pattern (I laid out the pieces on the fleece to decide placement, and left about 1/2 in on either side). In each end, make cuts, about 1/2 in apart or wider, and about 3 inches long, to make the fringe. Since this was a child's scarf, I just used the width of the bolt as the scarf length (for an adult, you'd need to go longer).

Now, lay out your pieces again to figure out final placement. I started a few inches up from the top of the fringe. Pin the Body section in place so you don't mess up your placement when you sew it.

Body: I sewed the robot body to the fleece using somewhat of a blanket stitch ( Futuregirl has a good tutorial on that ), with gold floss.
Note- this took the longest, and was pretty simple once you get the hang of it, but if you've never done it, practice on your scraps first.

I did a simple stitch across his neck line to define the head.

Arms: I used white floss to sew arms directly to the brown fleece. No fancy embroidery here, just made it up as I went along.

Hands: I placed the balls for the hands over the ends of the arms where I thought they looked good, and sewed them on using the gold floss, similarly to the body.

Final touches: Added "ears" and antenna with gold, and lightning bolts in green.

Note:
Since this was a quick gift for my two year old, I didn't finish off the back, so you can still see the stitching on the back side. For a more finished look, you could double the thickness and back it with another piece of brown (or contrasting colored) fleece, or any other fabric you like.

and watch the excitement commence!