Something To Crow About!

While at the seaside the other day, the lady we visited gave me a fascinating book full of patterns to make fabric birds.  Whilst many of them weren't really my 'thing', I was very taken with the crow and decided to have a go.

The patterns were a little intimidating, with instructions such as 'enlarge by 117%' - huh? - and as it is an American book, some of the products used were unfamiliar to me, but I soldiered on and luckily had an old skirt of my daughter's in the charity shop pile which was perfect for this project.

Ultimately, once I'd started to make the bird, I discovered it wasn't as hard as I had originally thought, just a little fiddly when it came to sewing the many, many fabric loops for the feathers.  My sewing machine and I have a bit of a love/hate relationship, especially when it comes to re-winding the bobbins and re-inserting them....but after a Basil Fawlty moment (without beating it with a tree branch!) we got there.

The feet were tricky - the only suitable wire I had in the house was very hard to bend and I couldn't quite get the shape of the toes that I wanted.  Then it said to wrap the feet with florist's tape, which I had never heard of, let alone had in the house.  Instead, I used insulation tape, which gave him great big ostrich feet....so this morning I visited the florists and picked up some tape and did it properly.  Wow, that's good stuff and it takes acrylic paint beautifully!

I've threaded a long strand of fishing filament through the wings in order to hang him up as if in flight, but the pattern also could be made with folded wings and the bird standing.

I wish I had the time at the moment to make a few more of the birds from this book - there is a flamingo pattern I quite fancy!  One day, definitely.