Sick time = craft time

I’ve been feeling pretty rank the last few days, but I’ve tried to suck it up and go to work (hopefully I didn’t give germs to TOO many kids). Today I woke up and knew there was noooo possible way I could go to work. I could hardly talk and had to cough after every 2-3 breaths. So I called in sick. Jay went to work and I told him I would ‘rest’. He walked out the door and I pulled out my sewing machine. Crafting is just as meditative as actually sleeping, so I figure I might as well craft instead of trying to sleep (let’s face it sick-sleep is not very restful, I get woken up about every 3 minutes by my gross cough). I wanted to make us some cute little birdies to hang on the door. Let me explain.

Last weekend, we went to a baby shower for a friend of ours. We made them a homemade baby mobile, out of 'natural materials'. We bought some wool felt from the fabric store, in 5 non-bright colors:I sewed 4 little birdies, with bodies that were different colors from their wings. We chopped down a madrone branch in the forest and used that as the top-bit of the mobile, 2 branches nailed together so they could still swivel. Jay used his tools to cut and then sand a small sun, which he oiled with olive oil. The sun hung from the center of the branches, down between the birds. The birds were hung from yarn at each end of the 2 branches. Here is a not-so-good picture of the result (check it out, I'm brushing my teeth in the background):

I thought it was really cute. Jay did too. I think the family we gave it to did too. It was a really fun present to make, didn’t take that long, and I hope the baby will love looking at it.

So on this here sick day, I was feeling inspired to make a few birdies for decoration in the bus. I made a paper pattern for the bird and it's wing. I got the idea for felt birds from this awesome site, but chose to simplify the tail so it'd be easier to sew. I also think this bird mobile is super cute, but it doesn't work well with felt. Each bird is about 7 inches from nose to tail tip. I copied and cut out 2 bodies and 2 wings from each felt color:

I wanted the wing color to be different than the body color, and since there were 5 colors and I decided to make 5 birds, each color was used for the body once and the wings once.

After cutting out the bodies and wings, I sewed the wing onto one side of the body. I sewed the other wing onto the other half of the body. I didn't do this first the first time I made one of the birds and then I had to hand stitch it (I like the clean stitches from the sewing machine, since the stitching shows on the birds).

Next I sewed the two halves of the body together. I sewed most of the way, leaving enough space at the tummy to stuff the birds. I decided I wanted to hang all of our birds in a row from one piece of yarn, so I also sewed the yarn into the body.

In order to give the birds some shape and strength, I stuffed them each with cardboard I cut off of a pizza box. Then I stuffed them with the bits of felt that were leftover from cutting out all the pieces, to give each one a more rounded shape. Then I used the sewing machine to stitch up the belly of each bird.

Here's the final product hanging on the back of our door...awwwwwww.