Miqo'te Ears tutorial! (How to make poseable cat ears) (Patreon)

Hey guys today I will be showing you how I made my Miqo'te ears from FFXIV! This method was created by Kamui Cosplay!! I did some small changes but people still wanted to know how I went about it so here it is!

Here is the pattern for the ears!!

The grey line is your curve line! This will be where you are starting to curve your base for the ears! Make sure that your ears are slightly slanted like this and not perfectly upright, they will be sitting on your head and if you make them perfectly upright it will not look right!

My own cat loves to eat foam so he can see his destruction in the corner lol, you can actually make these ears out craft foam if you cannot afford worbla, the material I used as a base for mine, so you can still make these ears with foam!! Here is how the pattern looks transferred to foam!

For mine though, I made the base out of worbla for extra stability! It just keeps its shape better and if you can afford just a small sheet for your ears I would recommend doing so! If not foam works or you can use poster board! No need to spend more than you need to.

CUT THOSE BABIES OUT

now with a heat gun go ahead and heat up your pattern and start to fold it inwards where I had the line on the pattern!  Don't overheat it though, just heat it enough so you can start moving it around, hold it in place till it cools down and release and it will keep its form! If you are doing this with foam this works as well but it doesn't hold its form as well, if you are doing this with poster board you just need to bend it in segments at the curve so you get a nice curve instead of a harsh angle!

I took some white fleece and transferred the pattern again! Leave half an inch of seam allowance just in case, this will be the inner part of your ears!

Ta dahhh

Now to glue it down! I used contact cement for this portion because of how strong the hold is, I do not recommended using other glues for this (maybe E6000)!

Take your time placing the felt fleece down, you have a little wiggle room time before it drys so just get it in there nice and easy! Go ahead and cut whatever fleece is off the sides of your base.

FUR TIME! BEFORE CUTTING YOUR FUR, brush the fur in the opposite direction it naturally does, this will make it so you do not cut off long pieces of the fur from the sections you are cutting off! The top right half shows I have brushed it in the opposite direction, while the rest looks normal. You want the section you are cutting to look like the top right BEFORE you start cutting!

And cut em ouuuuut, make sure you leave ONE HALF inch seam allowance! You will be folding that over the fleece/base edge!

Same as the fleece, glue them to the other side of your base!

With the extra seam allowance you have from the fur you want to take it and glue it over your edge and atop your inner fleece section! For this I used hot glue instead of contact cement, contact cement has a yellow tint and I did not want that showing up, hot glue is fine for this part cause your are adhering the wrong side of your fur to fleece and it will hold really with just it! You see that bottom part of the base of the ears, the extra fur? LEAVE IT! You will need it later!! Just leave it as it is! YOU NEED IT LOL.

TIME TO CUT! The fur is really long as you can tell, so get some scissors and get to cutting. I personally got the fur down as much as possible for the most part but left the base a little fluffy and the very tips slightly long, this is all a preference though! Do what you liek for your character!

PAINTING! I took some pink and orange paints and watered them down and got to work painting the inside of the ears, you should do this BEFORE gluing down your fur part but I was in a hurry lol. Just go ahead and paint your inner ears what color you think fits your cat, for me I did a pink base and did a gradient to a more orangey pink! For the outside fur I took some grey paint, watered it down and painted away on it, I found that using my finger and rubbing the watery paint in was a loot easier and gave a nice gradient DON'T USE TOO MUCH PAINT! Start little and work your way up, if you put too much you can add in some white (or whatever your base color is) to dull it out.

Now lets make em poseable! For this you need a semi thick gauge wire, I had this lying around so I used it but if you can get something a little thicker than this cause I had to double up on it.

Here is the shape you are going for! Like I said, I had to double up on my wire ahaha but if yours is thick enough you wont need to do this! The sharp part will be going into your ears while the curved part is going into your wig!

You may need to wiggle it around in there to make get in, take your time with this! Once they're in, lift whatever you can of the faux fur and glue the wires down to your base so they dont wiggle/fall out!

Now take the curved side and slide that into the top line netting of your wig! Find a good spot, try on the wig, make sure you like where they are at! If this is a wig you plan to use with other cosplays you can stop here! For extra stability cause they will move slightly you can bobby pin the wire to your wig/wig cap for extra stability!

If this wig is JUST for your cat ears, take hand needle and sew that small bottom flap of fur fabric you have at the base of your ears to your wig! This will make it so they never move!

AND THERE YOU GO!!! Ears are complete!! This can work for any animal ears honestly, hope this helped you out! Just bend them when you want to be a happy or sad cat!