OWLS tutorial

I’m having a HOOT making these owls!! they are great little birthday gifts….

anyways, I figured I’d post a tutorial on them, they are pretty basic though 🙂

If you want more tutorials or step by step pics let me know, I know there are LOTS out there, so I don’t want to do it if no-one is interested….

Here it goes.

I got the Fons & Porter Nov/Dec 2010 magazine and inside were these cute WOOL owls, but I don’t like wool and don’t have any, but have lots of scraps of cotton, so I figured I’d do a fabric version.

On page 84 is the patterns to trace out.



 First I started off with a pack of RICKY TIMS stable stuff, gotta love that STUFF!!

It’s a stabilizer that’s part paper part glue and fibers, the pack is 8 1/2 x 11 so you can stuff these pages thru the printer too! I didn’t do that, I traced all the body parts onto a sheet ( exept the body and bottom- I made paper templates for them)

 Then I cut out the pieces

Now the fun part is selecting the fabrics, I usually start with the body fabric first, then from my charms and other scraps I match up fabrics for body parts.

 I start off laying the pieces on the fabrics stacks and piling them up

Then with a glue stick and the wrong side of fabric side up, I glue the pieces to the fabrics and trim approx 1/4″ al the way around

After trimming down the pieces I just lay them out to make sure I like what I see, now is the time to change something if you have to.

I then sit and needle turn appliuque all of them- in front of the TV, or watching the kids do karate etc.

 I now pin the backing piece to the front , right sides together and notice the 3″ on the left where I double pinned. I don’t sew over that part, it’s for turning it inside out- not part of the pattern- since the pattern is for wool.

 It’s hard to see, but I just sewed 1/4″ all the way around back stitched before and after the hole and didn’t break the thread, just lifted the feed dog and moved down….

 the hardest part is really the bottom, it’s much smaller than the opening, so I pin and pin it all the way around, I marked with a pencil the 1/4 way around on the bottom piece and let the body pleat a little and used my applique pins since they are tiny!

once they are sewn together, I turn them inside out and use this wooden skewer type stick I got to make the ears pointy.

Stuff with fiber fill and add a piece of cardboard. CEREAL box is great to cut up.

Now for the pin cushion I used the template in the magazine for a little pouch and added rice to that for weight, but I don’t do that when they are gifts for kids…

Here are 4 owls all ready!!