Cardinal Ornament Tutorial and a Surprise

Do you want to make some pretty cardinals to decorate your home?  Or to throw at people?  DH keeps calling these "angry birds" and throwing them about the room!  They are not angry birds; they are very happy little cardinals that want to come and live at your house!  If you would like to make some, follow along:)

First gather your materials.  You will need some heavy red fabric.  I like to give old things a second life (usually as birds!) so I go to the thrift store and by old wool jackets for $3.  At home, I throw them in the washer and dryer on hot.  Then disassemble the fabric, take off the buttons, etc.  You will also need some sort of stuffing (I use wool roving), red thread, scissors, needles, straight pins, black beads, and embroidery floss in yellow, black, and red.

Now, you can either print off the pattern, which you'll find at the bottom, or just eyeball it and cut out these basic shapes.   You really don't have to worry about accuracy, and you can do it any size you wish.  The body is basically a 90º triangle, with a rounded bottom, so that when sewn together it becomes a cone.  Cut out one of these per bird.  Mine is about 4 1/2 inches long on the straight sides.  Then cut out 2 wing shapes, about 2 1/4 inches long.  For each wing you will also need 1 long feather (2"), 1 medium size(1 1/2"), and 2 small(1").  Pay no attention to the extra feathers in the picture.  I was obviously senile when I did that.  More on that later;)  Cut out 3 tail feathers, about 2 1/4" long.

In an effort not to put too many huge photos on here, I've combined steps.  So if you would like larger photos, hop on over to my Flickr page and look in the Cardinal tutorial set.

Now, fold your body piece so the straight sides line up.  Starting from the bottom, stitch close to the edge until about 3/4" away from the point.  Sew a couple of tack stitches to hold the thread here.  Turn the cone right side out, and push the raw fabric edges to the outside.  Now continue stitching to the point, about 3/16" from the edge.  Take the scissors and snip this edge to make some feathers.  Next, stuff the body.  I like to use a chop stick to get the stuffing up into the point.

Fold over the bottom edges to close it up, kind of like an envelope.  Pin it, and sew the seams shut.  Sew a wing shape onto the side.

Layer a large, medium, and small feather on top of the wing shape and sew them down.  Next place the second small feather on the top and sew it down too.  I use a straight stitch to secure everything, then come back with an overcast stitch, worked in tight, small stitches, to sort of meld the fabric layers together.  Do the same with the other wing, and the the tail feathers.  Next, you can give him some little feet with the black embroidery floss.  I used 6 strands and a split stitch.  Nothing fancy here, I just gave him 3 little toes on each foot.

Now, sew the black beads on for his eyes, and use the yellow floss and a satin stitch to form the beak.  Kind of like this:






Stitch around the edges and fill in with as many stitches as you need.  To give him just a little more of the cardinal appearance, you can take some scraps of black wool and a felting needle and work this in around his beak, or just use a permanent marker and color it in.  I used the wool on this one.  And one last thing, you can attach a hanging loop with the red embroidery floss if you'd like.

Here are the patterns.  You can click on them and they will take you to the "4 Shared" site, where you can download them to your computer and re-size them as desired.

Now, back to that senility thing.  I have a secret to tell you (shhh!)  This Thursday, I turn 50 years old.  I can just barely type that!  I'm really not sure how this happened.  Anyway, to celebrate I am going to give this cardinal (the one in the top picture) to one of you!

To enter to win, just leave me a comment telling me what your favorite bird is.  But wait!  You can get more chances to win!  Tweet this and you'll get your name in again; share it on your blog and you'll get your name in yet again!  Leave a separate comment for each one, telling me your Twitter name (@soandso), or your blog link.  How's that?  I will leave this open until 12AM Mountain Standard Time on Friday November 26, and I will announce the winner in Friday's blog post.

OK, this took way longer than I expected.  When you get this old, things just take forever!  I'll stop acting old now, because I don't feel old.  I have to call my mom; I still think someone has made a mistake;)