Dye & Stitch: Making Tie Dyed Felt Toucans

1. Intro: Sewing Tie Dyed Toucans: Hi, my name is Becca. I'm a full time teaching artist, and I work here in a micro studio in Minneapolis. I work primarily in fabric and paper, using surface design techniques like hand embroidery and printing to create my designs. I like to use layers of recycled paper and embroidery to add texture to my work. I teach here in my studio when I do online classes like this one, but I also do lots of classes at libraries and museums in my community and with fiber art guilds and conferences across the country. I've won a few awards for my work, and I even co authored a book about surface design on fabric and paper. This class is two terrific techniques in one, making tropical tide eyed two cans, Try saying that three times fast. I love to make tiny things, especially animals because they have so much personality and they always make people smile. I a lot of different creatures, but this class is extra special because you also get to learn how to make rainbow striped fabric for the two cans, beaks. We'll use a little kitchen science and some everyday materials, so you can do this technique right in your kitchen safely. You'll learn some hand embroidery and a little bit about dying wool, felt. Of course, you can use those skills to make many more different kinds of craft projects. You can make a two can, even if you don't have any sewing experience at all. This class is great for beginners. What are you waiting for? Let's make some tide eyed two cans. 2. Make Way for Toucans: The skills you'll learn in this class are some hand embroidery and how to hand dye wool felt. And we'll practice those by making a felt to can class into two parts. First, we'll learn how to dye wool felt. I'll show you two different techniques to get bright saturated colors using a little kitchen chemistry with acid and heat. Even though you'll need wool felt to do that part of the project, I'll talk about all kinds of other alternate materials you can use for other steps so that you can pull things from your stash. For the second half, we'll move on to sewing. You'll learn four different embroidery stitches and I'll give you lots of tips for sewing with felt. We'll talk about some of my favorite tools to make really outstanding creatures, and I'll tell you about my favorite materials for doing this kind of sewing. I hope you'll agree with me that these two cans are adorable. You can use them to make quirky ornaments, pins magnets, or even sew a whole bunch of them and make a cute tropical mobile. I hope that you have so much fun that you will come back and stitch a whole flock. We'll start out by talking about the tools and materials you need to complete your project. Tune into the next lesson and get ready to gather your supplies. 3. Tools & Materials: Okay, let's talk tools and materials First, I'm going to start talking about the materials you need to do the sewing section, and then we'll move on and talk about the dies part of it. Just after that, tools to start with, you will need a pair of small sharp scissors. I like ones like this that have really small blades. They make it easier for cutting small pieces which we'll be cut out the pieces for our two can scissors. You will need a needle. I will put an image up a little bit bigger on the screen so that you can see it. But the needles that I like to use are called a chanel needle. Chanel needles, I have two things that really make them awesome. They have a really big eye, so they're easy to thread and a nice sharp point. That's why I pick channel needles. You can also use an embroidery needle if you have some of those that will work great for this project. Then finally, you will need a glue stick. Just a regular old school glue stick. We're going to use that to help baste or temporarily hold some layers together while we're doing our stitching. That's it for tools. One other thing you'll need to do is to print out the pattern pieces for the two can. Now I have a sheet in the downloads that you can download a PDF and print it just on your regular home printer. You've got two choices for printing. You can print on just regular paper and cut it out like you would any, a sewing pattern by cutting the pieces and pinning them onto your felt. But I want to recommend one other material which I think makes this project even easier and your results turn out better. That's to use a paper called freezer paper. Sometimes it's called quilters freezer paper or quilters applique paper. It is regular paper on one side, but then on the other side it's got a waxy finish. After you've printed on the papery side of this, you can take this paper, put it on your felt fabric, and you can run a warm iron over it, and it will adhere temporarily this paper to the fabric. Then when you go to cut it out, you don't need pins or clips or anything like that. I'll do a demonstration of that later on in the lesson. But I wanted to say, if you want to track down some freezer paper, I put some resources in the handout, which is available to download for the class. You'll need your pattern pieces, then you'll need some felt fabric. I want to talk a little bit about the kind of felt that you need to do for this class. We need just four colors. You'll need some white, black, a little scrap of brown that's going to make the branch that the two can, is sitting on. And a little scrap of green because we're going to make a leaf that goes on the branch. Now, the brown, the green, and the black, You can use anything. You've got the white I want to talk about. You need to have a specific felt, that is, you need felt that's got at least 30% wool as part of the fibers that make it up. You'll need to read the label carefully. Most craft stores carry felt which is made from either acrylic or polyester. That will not work for this project. The E part of it requires that we have wool fiber. In the resources handout, I have several places that you can get wool blend fabric. It doesn't have to be 100% wool, just a minimum of 30% wool. You only need that in the white because the white is going to be the piece that we die. We're going to do tie die to make the two cans beak. That part has to be diable. Now for the beak, you only need a piece that's probably 6 " square to be able to do the die work. I have a little bit bigger piece here. Then you need one scrap that will leave plain white. That will be the bib, the face, and the chest of your two can then thread. I have two thread options for you. You've probably seen six stranded embroidery thread before and this is a great choice For this project, you'll need just three colors. A white, a black, and then a color that matches the beak of your tu can. It could be yellow, orange, pink, blue. It depends on what you decide to use for de colors. But you're also going to stitch the feet of your Tu can with that. That might help you make a color choice. For this class, I'm going to use yellow because it's going to show up really well when I'm stitching. You can use six stranded embroidery thread or I'm going to stitch my project using something called number eight pearl cotton. Pearl cotton is another embroidery thread. I like it a little bit better because it comes as just one strand that you use all together. I think it's a little stronger, it's a little smoother. I like stitching with it. You can also get size eight pearl cotton to do your project. It's going to look pretty much the same no matter which one you choose. If you have either one of these in your stash, go ahead and use that. You can even mix and match. Same thing with pearl cotton. You'll need a black, a white, and whatever that bright color is to match your beak and to make the feet. There's one more scrap of felt here. This is the piece that's going to go inside the two can, we're not going to see this. It basically is acting as something to be a little bit stiff, to give it a little bit of structure and a little bit of dimension. You can use lots of different things for this. For my example, I'm going to use something called stiffened felt. That is the same felt fabric I talked about before, But this one has a little bit of starch or something added to it. It's very thick and stiff. You can see I can bend it. Anything will work As long as you can cut it easily and put it inside your two can. I will put a list of examples up on the screen next to me. But you could use some stiff and felt. If you can find that at your craft store, and I'll put some resources for that in the resources section, you could use a heavyweight interfacing. You could use a lightweight cardboard. I love to cut pieces out of the lids to takeout containers, which are usually a lightweight flexible plastic. Any of those things will work because it's going to be hidden inside your two can and it's just there to give a little bit of stiffness. We'll talk a little more when we get to that lesson about the different options for that and what you can use. Okay, the last material that you'll need is something to make the two cans eye. There are lots of options. My very favorite is I'm a junkie for sequins. I love them. I love the sparkle. When I make the two can eyes, I use three different sequins that are flat ones. I use two that are black, a large one and a small one. And then some a bright color to make the eye have a layered effect. And I'll put a picture of that up on the screen so you can see what that looks like. Now, you might not want to invest in a whole bunch of packages of different size of sequence just to get the three that you want to make the eye. And that's totally okay. If you can find a pack that's got an assortment, great. Otherwise there are lots of other options. You can use a small button, there's one with holes. This is one that's got like a little shank on the back of it. Either works great or you could use a small bead. This is a little handmade glass bead. All of these things should be about a quarter of an inch. You can take a ruler and measure anything that's a little bit shiny and bright colored because you're going to put it against a black Tu can will work great for the eye. There are lots of options there that you can find. I'm going to stitch the stack of sequins in the sample I do for this class because that's the most complicated one, so you can see what that looks like. Okay, now let's talk a little about the supplies that you'll need to do the ye, part of this class. So we're going to tideye that piece of white felt so that we can make the beak be a bright color for the tu can. You can do that a couple of different ways here. As some of the materials that you will need, I use a recycled takeout container to do my dying in because it's a really easy thing to find. You need something that is able to go in the microwave. Ideally a plastic or a glass container. All of what we're going to be doing is food safe. It's kitchen safe, so you don't have to worry about ruining a container because you're putting dye in it. We're going to use a couple of clever things to do our dying. You need a container of some sort. You'll need a few rubber bands, and then you can choose your E. I'm going to demonstrate using both methods. Either one you'll have a lesson to show you how to use it. You can either use food coloring like you use for making birthday cakes, or you can use my favorite old. It doesn't have to be either of these brands specifically. Any kind of store brand or anything like that is going to work great. You just need something that's got color in it, then you need a source of acid. Now the cool thing about kolid is if you look on the label, the very first ingredient listed is citric acid. And that is part of what you need to do this dye process could or a similar powdered drink mix works great. Food coloring doesn't have any acid in it. If you decide to use food coloring is your option. You will need a little splash of some plain white vinegar. Then I always grab a pair of vinyl gloves because could or food coloring are not dangerous to get on your skin. But they will dye your hands and your fingernails. And I don't like being green and blue for days. After I do my project, I usually grab a pair of gloves that should take care of all of the things that we need to create our tide. You'll need a little bit of hot water, like I mentioned before, you will need to be able to put it in the microwave. One of the important parts of doing this die process is you need to add heat. We'll talk more about that in the tide lesson. But just so that you can gather all the materials you need to do your project once more. Here is a rundown on the screen of all the materials that you'll need. You can use this like a checklist. Pause the video here, and make sure you've got everything. Then we'll move on to the next lesson, where we're going to start doing our tide. 4. Time to Tie Dye: Okay. Let's get ready to tie die. You can see I already have my gloves on. And again, that's not because I'm worried about these Yes. Being unsafe. It's because I don't like to have my hands dyed blue and green for the next few days. Let's talk a little bit before we get started about why this kind of dying works. In a little note or two about die safety, we mentioned when I talked about materials that the reason that this works is because you need acid and heat to dye wool Fabric A only works on wool or other protein or animal fibers. It won't work on cotton, or linen, or bamboo, or any plant fiber. It won't work on any manmade fibers like polyester. You have to have wool in order to do this e technique. What wool needs in order to absorb the color is it needs to have acid and heat in addition to whatever you're using as color. We're going to add that in a couple of different ways. The first thing I want to do is prepare our fabric so we've got that ready and out of the way. And then we'll talk about the two different kinds of dyes that you can use, one or both, or mix and match them however you want to. Let's talk fabric first. I have a square of wool fabric, and it's wool and rayon blend, felt. And it's what I mentioned in the resources section, the materials for this class, I have a square that's about 6 ". This will shrink a tiny bit when I die it. So I want to make sure I have a big enough piece to cut out the beak and the flowers that go with my two. Can I think this is a great size. I like to de, small pieces and do one after the other, versus doing a really big piece. Because as you are dying, you learn what techniques work and what don't. If you do one big piece, you have one chance where if you do a bunch of small ones, you get a lot of opportunities to learn the best pattern, the way of manipulating the fabric, I think that works for these two can beats, is to make a bunch of little pleats. And we're going to leave the fabric so that it's all in one layer so that it's not folded over on itself in any way. The way I do that is I lay the fabric down flat on the table and I'm going to use my fingertips to just make little pinches. And I'm making accordion pleats by pinching the fabric. And you can see I'm not letting it fold over or double up, I'm just pinching it next to each other. I've got like a paper fan, little accordion pleats like. So I'm going to hold it with one hand and grab a rubber band. If I can just pick it up gently, I'm going to wrap the rubber band around a bunch of times. It doesn't have to be super tight, just enough to hold those little folds in place. So I'm going to repeat that, do the same accordion pleats down the center and at the other end. And I'll speed up the video a little bit. Okay, now I've got my fabric kind of bundled in three places now my felt was dry when I started. I want to get this wet before I add any dye to it, so you can run it underneath the faucet of your sink. I have a container of water here. I'm just going to dunk it in so that it gets a little bit wet. And I will wring out the extra so it's not too drippy. The reason you want to get it wet, even though it doesn't make sense when you start to add the dye on it. If it's wet, the color will tend to stay put where you put it a little better than if it's dry. If your felt is dry, it wants to pull all of the liquid dye and it tends to make your colors look a little muddier. Okay, I have it pleated, I have some rubber bands around it and it's wet. I'm going to put it into my microwaveable container, just a recycled takeout container. And I'm just going to set it off to the side for right now. Okay, So let's talk de colors. I'm going to show you two different options. They both work either one and you can mix and match them if you want to use some colors one way and some colors the other way, or do it all with one or the other. All of those work. Let's start with old. Okay. I have a couple of small just canning jars that are like jelly jars that I'm going to mix up my Yes in. You can use any small container coffee cups, yogurt cups, anything like that. They're washable so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined by doing this. And I'm going to grab some olade packets. Now like I said, you don't have to use could brand, you can use a store brand, anything like that. The only thing you want to look for is on the label that it contains citric acid. It's any a drink packet that has citric acid and you want one that doesn't have sugar in it already. Sugar will just make your project sticky. This is the cold that they expect you to add sugar to. You can see it says unsweetened drink mix. That's what you're looking for when you decide what a drink packet to use. I'm going to mix up a couple of colors in Olade. Then I'm going to do a couple of colors in food coloring so you can see how both of them work. I think we'll do these top two with Ola ad I have just some plain water here. It's a little bit warm because I think the, the powders dissolve a little better when it's warm. And I'm just going to pour maybe a four a cup. It's a few tablespoons in the bottom. The amount of water isn't important, just enough that you can get it dissolved. I'll open up, there's one packet I like to put the water in first, and then the powder on top of it, I think it dissolves a little better that way. Okay, I've got a spoon. Just give it a stir and just try to get all of it dissolved for kulaid. That's all you have to do or any other kind of drink mix is just dissolve it in some warm water is all you need. Okay, I might give those another stir after a minute. Those are ready to go. I'm going to set those to the side. Then we're going to talk about using food coloring. Here are my food coloring little bottles that came from this Mccormick food coloring. Any liquid food coloring that you use for doing frosting or that thing will work great. These are just color, unlike the drink mix, these don't have any acid in them. If you want to use food coloring, you also need to add some white vinegar. Just regular old white vinegar is great. Instead of water, we're going to put a four cup of white vinegar in the bottom of these containers. Food coloring plus vinegar. Then we'll add some drops of food coloring into this. I already have orange and blue. I think maybe I'll make a green. I can't tell you really how many drops, Maybe ten or 12, until it looks like you've got a nice saturated color. So I put about ten drops of yellow, maybe two of green or two of blue to make green. That looks pretty green to me. Okay? And in this one maybe I'll just make plain red. And same thing I'll put about, I don't know, ten or 12 drops. You can experiment to see how much it takes for your food coloring. Okay. Now I have those ready. Okay. So quick review. Food coloring, you need to put with acid, so some vinegar could or any powdered drink mix goes just with warm water. Okay, now I have my four colors and I'm going to move those over and grab my felt fabric. I like to use the spoon to do this. I'm going to add to the color to the felt in stripes. I like the spoon rather than just pouring it on because I have a little bit more control of where the color goes. I think I'll start with orange. It's at the top here. I'm just going to pour a little stripe of color on top. And I want to get enough so that the fabric looks like it's totally saturated. It's got lots of color in it, but not so much that I have a puddle underneath in the container. Because the more extra E is in there, the more the colors will run together. Okay, after orange, maybe I'll put some red. You can see that the color tends to creep past where you put it. That's totally fine. It's going to blend together right there where the colors match or where they meet up. There's a band of red here. I'm going to put a band of blue. I love the blue raspberry lemonade could color, That's this great turquoise blue. Okay then let's see, we haven't done green. I'll put green in next. You can use as many or as few colors as you want to. You don't have to mix up four. Doing something in just orange and white, for instance, works great. Don't feel like you have to go out and get a whole bunch of different colors if you don't want to, but I'm going to make this one really rainbowie, since we have all the colors mixed up, another nice thick band of red. Maybe I'll put blue red at the end. Okay. If I can see some extra E pooling up in the bottom. I'm just going to pick up my fabric and I'm just going to pour this extra E. I would pour it in the sink, but since I'm here at my desk, I'm going to just pour it into my water container. Okay, it's pretty dry. I'm also going to do one more thing which is to flip this over so I'm looking at the underside of it and make sure that I have enough color that made it all the way through. I can see down here at the bottom that it still looks a little bit white. So I'm going to add just a little bit more down here. Mostly because I like to have my colors really saturated. I love to have a lot of color in these. A little bit of orange. Okay. Maybe I'll hit the center with a little bit of green. It doesn't matter if it matches the front part. Exactly. Okay. Once you have enough die so that it looks like everything's got some color on it, the next step is to take this into the kitchen wherever you have your microwave and you want to microwave it for 1 minute, You don't want to go over 1 minute. You don't want to accidentally boil this dry so that all the liquid gets boiled off. You can burn the wool. Felt if you've ever accidentally set some hair on fire. This smells just like that. It's terrible. You don't want to do that. 1 minute in the microwave. I'll take a photo of that, since my microwave isn't right here where the video is. Then you want to take it out of the microwave and set it on the counter. And let it rest until it comes back down to room temperature. I know that's the hardest part is waiting, but you want it to have as much time with the heat on it as you can. We talked a little at the beginning of the lesson. In order for these colors to be permanent, it needs acid plus heat. You want to make sure that it's got plenty of time to be warm so that the colors can really lock into the fibers. I'm going to go throw this in the microwave and we'll come back in the next lesson and talk about how you finish this up and get it ready to make your two can Beak. 5. Rinsing & Drying your Felt: Okay, hopefully your felt fabric is cooled off by now. The last step to get this all finished up is to rinse out the extra die or the extra food coloring could. Whatever it is you want to take your little bundle of fabric to the sink and just rinse it in rim temperature water until it looks like the water is running clear. Then you can unbundle it and unfold it. You get to see your tee. I have two examples here. And I just to put them on a terry cloth towel so that they can dry, um, and that'll help wick some of the moisture away. You can also put them on like a wire baking rack, which is great because the air can circulate around and they'll dry a little faster. Usually it takes wool felt overnight to dry. You have to have a little bit of patience, but it's worth it. I wanted to show you two different examples here. Because when we talked about dying, the felt, one of the steps we did was to get it wet. Before we put the colors on, I wanted to show you an example on the right hand side. This is the piece I dyed in the last lesson, where we got the felt wet before I put the colors on it. The one here on the left hand side is one that I died while it was dry. And you can see how much more the colors blended together. And it gets more of a watercolory look where the colors are sharper and crisper. On the one on the right hand side, that's the difference between wet and dry, if you want to do a little experiment. Okay, to finish up sort of our tie die section, I want to first recap. So if you want to do this again, just to remember the steps of how you tie die wool felt. First, we want to bundle it up so that you're keeping it in one layer to make sure that the dye can get through all of the parts of the felt. Second, you want to get it wet so that the colors can lock in to where you put them or you can leave it dry to get more of a water color effect. Number three, you got to mix up your Yes, if you're using could or another powdered drink mix, you just need that plus some warm water. And that's about a four a cup of warm water. If you want to use food coloring, you need to use a four a cup of vinegar. So you've got the acid plus the food coloring. Okay? You can use any combination of those to make your colors. Spoon the color over top of your felt fabric. Make sure that you don't have a muddy brown puddle in the bottom of your container. And then finally, you want a microwave for 1 minute. And be sure to keep an eye on your microwave so that your fabric doesn't boil dry. When you're all done, you want to let it come to room temperature, Give it a rinse and then let it dry, then you're ready to go on to making your two can. I wanted to talk about one other thing just in case. If you don't have a microwave, you can still do this project. Another great way to add heat to your felt is to cover it up with some black plastic and set it in the sun. You can do it in your driveway or on the sidewalk in front of your house. Just wrap it up. The black will help absorb the heat and you can leave it for about an hour sitting in the sunshine. That will give it enough heat that the dyes will lock in and it will be permanent. Just as if you microwaved it, there's a little tip, if you don't have a microwave in your house, you can still do the project. 6. Placing Pattern Pieces: All right, we are ready to start cutting out our pieces. You should have printed your pattern pieces either on regular paper and you'll need some pins or on this freezer paper. Now you can follow the instructions on the package of freezer paper that you get. But basically you can run it through an ink jet printer, print on the paper side, and then we're going to use the waxy or shiny side of it to iron onto our felt fabric. The first thing I do is cut apart the pattern pieces based on what color. I know that these need to go on. Okay, so let's go through my stack. Leaf goes onto some shade of green. The bib will stay plain white, so hopefully you've got a scrap of some plain white that'll go onto the corner there. The branch goes on to brown or it could maybe be gray. Anything you've got that looks like a branch. The beak is the fun part. Both the beak and the flowers you can cut from your tidy, felt this one. You want to spend a little time thinking about what part of your tide you want to use for the beak. I think I'm actually going to cut these two apart. I'm going to take a little time to play around with what part of it I'm going to use now as you're thinking about it. The rounded part here is going to be the tip of the beak. And this piece will actually be folded in half. You'll see part of it on the front and part of it on the back. I could put it over here and use the orange and red part, or I could put it up here and use some of the blue. That's up to you to decide. I think I'm going to use this part here and I'm going to cut my flowers out of the blue and red up there, okay? Then I'm going to skip over this one. The front and back go on black. So I'm going to put those pattern pieces against the black. And then finally, this piece, which looks like a two can, is the part that goes on the interfacing. There are several options you can use for this. I'm going to use the stiffened felt. It's a much stiffer piece than the felt fabric we're going to be sewing with. For that, I can use the same waxy paper and iron it right onto this piece of stiffened felt. I'm going to do that for mine. But if you don't have stiff felt or interfacing like this, you could also use a takeout container lid. You can just trace around this pattern, like use a pen or a sharpie and cut out from a piece of the lid that gives you a nice stiff piece that you can put on the inside, or you could use a piece of thin cardboard. This is like chipboard. That's about the weight of a cereal box. Cardboard isn't my favorite only because if it ever gets a fold or a crease in it, you can't really get it out again. And if it gets wet, cardboard can get ruined. But if you think yours is going to be in a safe place that cardboard will work, go ahead and again, you can cut it out and trace it onto the cardboard and then cut that piece. Okay, when you get all done, you will have 123-45-6789 pieces that it'll be ready to go for the next lesson. My next step is I'm going to go over to my ironing board and I'm going to use a warm iron to iron each of these pieces and stick them to the felt. If you aren't using the freezer paper that can stick down to the felt, then you can use pins to secure these in place. And go ahead and cut around the dark line, the solid line around the outside edge of each of the pattern pieces. In the next lesson, I'll give you just a few quick tips for cutting to make sure that your pieces will fit together when we go to assemble the two cats. 7. Cutting Tips: Let's cut out our pieces. You want to cut out each one of these pieces along the solid black line on the outside edge. A few pieces have some dotted lines. Those are to help you with placing things later. When we go to put the piece together, one tip I want to show you is the way you cut these out. I think you get much nicer lines that are smoother, if you think about holding your scissors steady but moving the fabric. Here's what I mean, I'm going to start cutting down here by the tail. And you can see I'm rotating the piece of fabric around. Instead of moving my scissors as I cut this curve, I'm moving the fabric in the direction that it needs to go. Okay, I think this helps you get smoother curves as you're going around versus moving your scissors every time as I'm going to try to do here. And then moving direction with the scissors, which tends to make little tiny short cuts, which will give you choppy or ragged edges. Okay? Again, I'm holding my scissors. Study, and I'm just rotating the felt around to put it in place. Okay? I want to cut these as accurately as I can, because a lot of these pieces need to fit together front to back. Okay, I want you to continue cutting out the rest of the pieces. And I'm going to speed this up so you can just watch me as I go, but we don't have to do it all in real time. And then I'm going to come back when we get to the flower, just to show you another couple of tips for when you're working with sharp inside corners. Okay. I've got my leaf and my flowers left. These ones I wanted to talk about a little bit because they have some really sharp corners that point towards the inside. My tip for cutting these is I'm first going to just rough cut the flowers. I don't have this extra fabric in the way. Then I make the flowers in a bunch of cuts that go towards the inside corner. Instead of trying to get around with my scissors all the different directions, I'm going to cut this side to the inside. Then I'm going to come over and do this petal and cut it to the inside. And you can see how it's much easier to cut towards that inside corner than try to turn your scissors around in that sharp space. So I'm going to do the same thing, this petal, and then cut in towards the center here. Okay, so I'm going to continue to cut out the flower and then the leaf shape the same way. And I will speed up the video one more time. Okay, the last step to getting your pieces ready to stitch is that we need to take off the pattern pieces. If you have them pinned, you can unpin them with the freezer paper. The best way to remove the paper from them is to lay the piece flat down on the table. And I want you to peel the paper away from the felt instead of pulling on the felt layer. And the reason I do that is I don't want the felt to accidentally stretch, especially in some of the places where it's kind of thin or small. So I'm just going to get kind of a fingernail under the edge and you can see I can pull the paper back just gently and it comes right off the felt. Now, the cool thing about these freezer paper pieces is you can re use them. Don't throw them away. As you are pulling your pieces off though, you can re iron that waxy side by just putting it down on the felt again and giving it another pass. With a warm iron, usually they will work about six or seven times before they sort of lose their stickiness and won't adhere to the felt anymore. So be sure to hang onto your pattern pieces. We'll use a few for placement in later lessons. And you can also re, use them to make another two can go ahead and peel the paper off all of your pieces. And then we'll be ready in the next lesson to start stitching. 8. Stitching the Beak: We're going to start stitching the two can with the beak. The first pieces you need are your interfacing piece, the stiffened felt or plastic or cardboard piece, and the beak. All the rest of the pieces you can set aside for now, we need those two. You need your glue stick. We're going to use that to help hold the pieces together temporarily, to bate them in place. Then you need to choose a color of thread. We're going to stitch the top edge of the two cans beak. Now I'm going to stitch mine in yellow because I'm going to use the same color for the beak that I'm going to use for the feet later. I think this will be easy for you to see on camera. Normally, I would pick a color that matched the colors in my tie as closely as possible. In this case, I think this orange would actually be pretty perfect because it blends in pretty well with the colors in the tie. The color of thread you need will depend entirely on what color your tide turned out. Now I'm showing you examples with the number eight pearl cotton. You also can use the embroidery thread for this, you're looking for the color to stitch your beak in. If you're going to use the six stranded embroidery thread, when you cut a piece of it, I would like you to cut a to stitch with. But before you start stitching, you'll want to split it into three threads. Bundles of three threads. If you try to use all six, it's going to be too thick. You want to split it into 3.3 That's usually easy once you get it started to just pull it apart. There we go, okay, Into two bundles. The color thread that you need for stitching, I said, I'm going to use yellow, your interfacing your beak, your glue stick. And you'll need your needle. And I've put mine in a little piece of extra felt over here so that I didn't lose it. We're going to first base the beak onto this interfacing piece. When I say based, what I mean is we're going to use the glue stick to temporarily hold it in place so that we can stitch it without it moving around. The way we're going to place this on here, the beak is going to wrap around the beak of this interfacing piece. The top, the curved edge here is going to go about a toothpicks width, about eighth of an inch away from the top edge of the felt. You can see when I lay it down there, if I put that there, when I grab the bottom edge and I'm just going to get it out from under, I should be able to fold it up in half. And you'll see that it should match up with the top edge. That beak part of the interfacing piece or stiffener piece, should be totally inside the beak. That's what we're going for. You also can look there's a little notch on the top edge right here. The bottom of the notch should match up with the top of the, interfacing the top of the head. Okay, One other placement thing to check is you want to make sure that the edge of the felt, the straight edge here is pushed back as far as it can right in that corner. You don't want it to be out here somewhere. You want to make sure that you push this back so that it rests as far as it can in that corner. And it folds over like so. Okay, once you see where it's placed, then you can open it back up again. And I'm going to put a little bit of glue stick just on the part of the beak here and on the back side, front and back, you can use glue stick, whether you're using cardboard or plastic. It's just something that's going to help hold the layers together for a minute until we're ready to stitch it. Little glue stick front and back. Okay. And then I'm going to place this back so that it's about a toothpick width away from the edge, it's back in the corner. And then I'm going to fold this up so that it folds in half. And I'm matching this top edge. Once you have that, you want to just press down and hold it with your fingers for just a few seconds and that'll let that glue stick, grab a hold. I like this much better than using pins or clips or something that gets in the way is I let the glue do a little bit of the work. Okay, that's holding it in place. Now I want to grab some thread on my needle, either pearl cotton or six stranded embroidery thread. I would like you to grab a piece that is about 14 " long. You don't have to grab a ruler. A great way to measure that is to grab the thread in the tips of your fingers and to measure it back to your elbow and give it a little extra. And that's about the right size thread to cut off there. I've trimmed off a piece. Then you want to thread your needle. I want to show you one of my favorite tricks for needle threading. If you're not very good at it, this can be a real help. All you need for my favorite needle threader is a scrap of paper I'm going to grab. I have just a notebook back here on my file cabinet. I'm just grabbing a piece of notebook paper. I'm going to cut just a little slip of paper. It's about, I don't know, a little more than an eighth of an inch wide and a couple inches long. It's a little piece like a French fry. Take that piece of paper and fold it in half. You're making like a letter V. Then pick up the end of your thread and you want to put the thread inside the V and close it up. Okay, I've got my thread down in the fold. Now I'm going to take the ends of the paper and I'm going to put those through the eye of the needle. You do have to have a needle that's got a pretty big eye for this to work, which is why I love chanel needles. I'm going to fish the paper through, which is much easier to pull through than floppy thread. Okay. Then I'm just going to pull on the ends of the paper when it gets up to the eye of the needle here. If I give it a little wiggle and pinch it through my fingers, there we go, I have pulled the thread through the eye of the needle. There's my best reusable needle threader, right? There is a little slip of paper. They make ones that are made out of wire and all kinds of other things. I always break those. I really like the slip of paper better. One other thing I want you to do before you start stitching is I did this while I was talking to you without even thinking about it. Which is I want you to take the thread and just run it through your fingers, pulling it back from the needle. You can see I'm not pulling it out of the eye of the needle, I'm just kind of pulling it back. This is called conditioning your thread. And what it does is it helps push some of the extra twist out of the thread. It will help it keep from getting knotted up later on when you're stitching. So it's something I do by habit because I sew a lot by hand, is just run it through my fingers a few times. Okay. Then in the end of the thread that is opposite the needle, so not the one through the eye, but in the other end, I want you to tie a knot. The knot I use is just an overhand knot. You can use any kind of knot you know how to tie. But overhand knot means I wrap it around the tip of my finger, then I pop that loop off the end. I grab the end of the thread and stuff it underneath and through the loop, then I just pull that tight. That makes one overhand knot. 1 knot will be plenty to hold onto this. Okay, I've tight a knot and my needle is ready to go. We are now going to stitch the top curved side of the two cans beak. The first stitch we're going to learn is called a whip stitch. I want you to bring your needle. We're going to start right up here where the notches right where the curve part of the beak starts. And I'm going to go between the two layers. I'm putting my needle where the stiffened felt is. I just want to go through one layer and bring the thread from that inside out towards me. When I pull that through, what's going to happen is it's going to take the knot, it's going to stop at the knot. This way, the little end of thread I can just tuck in between the layers and it's going to hide my knot, which I love. I like being able to hide the ends of the thread. Okay, now to do a whip stitch, the only thing you need to remember about whip stitch is you always want to move your needle in the same direction for me. I'm going to come from the back or the side that's away from me and then towards me. The way I'm holding it, I'm going to come from back here or what's on my right hand side, towards the left. I'm going to move my thread over just so you can see a little better. I'm going to take my needle and I'm going to come through from that side towards me. I'm an eighth of an inch. About a toothpick width away from where my thread is coming out. And I'm about a toothpick width away from the cut edge of the felt. That's how much I'm biting in is about a toothpick there and I'm making my stitches about a toothpick or an eighth of an inch or so apart. Okay. Once I got my needle placed, then I'm going to pull it through and you're going to see it's going to bring one diagonal loop across the two edges of the felt. This is the perfect stitch for attaching two pieces of felt together. It's great for going around edges like this. Okay, I'm going to keep going the same way. I'm going to bring my needle from the back to the front towards me. I'm moving over about a 16th of an inch, about a toothpick width from where my last stitch was and pull through. And I'm just going to keep going the same way. I always remembering to go from back to front or towards me is how I'm stitching this one, how I'm holding it. One other thing you'll notice is with my left hand, I'm just pinching the two layers together that makes it easy for me to get my needle through both. And I can see that they're lined up, I'm stitching them so that they're in the right place back to front or towards me every time. And it's going to make this nice diagonal stitch all along the top edge. And I want to go all the way to the tip of the beak, where that fold is. Okay, I can fit maybe two more stitches in there. Then I've gotten to that folded edge. Okay. Now we're going to tie a knot because we've made it all the way to that edge. To tie a knot, I'm going to make one more stitch, basically right in the same place as this last one. I'm going to bring my needle through that same spot one more time. When I pull it through, this time I'm not going to pull it all the way closed. I'm going to leave just a little loop. Then I'm going to take my needle. I'm going to bring it through from bottom to top once. And then I'm going to do the same thing again. Go from bottom to top, right to left twice. So I've got two twists and then I'm just pinching the end here. I'm going to gently pull on that with my needle. And that is going to snug a knot right down against the edge of the felt. The last step. I don't want to just trim this off right here, because then I'm going to have this tail of thread sticking out, out in space. I want to do what I call burying the thread. How I do that is I'm going to take my needle and I'm just going to basically run a stitch in between the layers. So I'm going to slide it between the layers of felt back into the beak, a little ways, it's about a width of my finger back in there and it's not showing from the other side. I'm just going between the layers of felt and pulling that through. Then I can take my small scissors and I can just trim the thread off right against the surface of the fabric, and that's just going to hide that end. Now I have a nice neat finish. Now we've finished the beak. Next we're going to start putting together the face and the bib on the two can. 9. Adding the Toucan's Bib: Okay, next we're going to add the two cans bib to the front. We're going to set the beak pieces side. I want you to pull out this little white, I don't know, half moon shape. And one of your black body pieces, one of these will be the front, one will be the back. Okay. And you should have two that you can set, so they're looking at each other, so they're going opposite directions. Felt is the same on both sides. You can flip one over if you need to. Okay, We just need one of the black pieces and the white one. As you pick up this one, you can see if you match it up, the straight edge here is going to match the straight edge on the front of the face. Then this little curved part here should match the curved part on the black. That's how that aligns. And we're going to layer that up like that, same trick. We're going to grab the glue stick and we're going to base those two layers together. I've checked it to make sure that it lines up. I'm going to put a little glue on the back. I'm going to place it back on top. The reason I use the glue is that I don't have to worry about it moving around as I'm stitching. Once again, I'm just going to hold it for a few seconds so that it grabs on. The next part we're going to stitch is we're going to go around the curved edge of the bib. We're going to attach that to the black. We'll need white thread so you can grab a piece of white. And the same way we did for the beak, you want about 14 ". Again, measure from your fingertips to your elbow. Remember to use your paper needle threader if you need help threading your needle. Okay, so I'm going to thread it and I'm going to tie a knot in the end, just like we did before. A little loop around, stuff that through, and now I've got a knot. Okay, we're going to use a variation on the whip stitch to do this. Stitched edge here on the white, it's called a stab stitch. It works pretty much like whip stitch does. I'm going to hold my piece like this so that I can stitch going around this way. And I'm going to bring my needle through both layers. I'm going to go from the back to the front. I'm going to bring it up about a toothpick width, about an eighth of an inch from the cut edge, from this flat edge. And about that same amount in from the edge of the white. I'm going to bring it up about there. I'll hold that up close to the camera so you can see I'm in a little bit and I'm away from the cut edge a little bit. Okay, I'm going to bring that through both layers. Now I have my thread on the front. To finish this first stitch, I am going to stitch down right at the edge of the white felt. This second part of the stitch, I'm only going through the black layer, but my needle is just resting right up against the white that when I pull it through will make a tiny little stitch just right at the edge. I'm going to continue that all the way around this curve. You don't need these to be very close together so you can space them about two toothpicks, width more like maybe a quarter of an inch or a little less. Okay, I'm going to come up from the back. I'm just a little ways away from the cut edge of the white. The first part of the stitch comes through both layers and then goes down again right at the edge of the white and stitch down. Okay, I'm going to continue, I'll do one more stitch. Slow coming up through both layers and then down right at the edge of the white felt. Okay, I'm going to speed up the video and just continue all the way around until I'm almost to the edge over here of this curved side. Okay, I'm almost at the edge here. I'm going to make one more stitch. Close to the edge again, I'm about a 16th of an inch. About a toothpick width away from the edge. More like an eighth, maybe I'll make one more stitch right there and bring my needle to the back. Now I am ready to tie a knot. We're going to stitch this other edge later on in the two. Can we only need to do this curved one. Tying a knot here is just a little bit different than we did on the edge of the beak. This one we want to end up on the back side of the felt. When I finish stitching, I'm going to flip it over to the backside and I'm going to look at where the thread is coming out of the fabric. That's right here at the edge. Going to make a tiny little stitch on the back, right close to where that thread is coming out. And I'm just taking a little bite out of the felt. It's not going all the way through to the front. We won't see this stitch, but it's biting in enough that it feels like it's going to stay there, it'll be solid. Okay, I've done that little stitch that's right next to where the threads coming out. I'm going to pull that until I leave a small loop that's like what we did on the edge of the beak. I've got this loop. I'm going to go through the loop twice, just like we did before. I'm going to go right to left through the loop. I'm going to do that a second time. Go on the same way from bottom to top or from right to left. Okay, for this one, I think the knot is tidier. If you lay your piece down on the table and take two fingers and put one on either side of where the knot is going to happen, Just press that down. This helps keep the felt from getting accidentally pulled through or stretched out. I'm just holding it down with my left hand and I'm going to gently pull on the thread. And that should pull a knot right down against the back. Okay. And then I'm going to trim it off. I like to leave a little bit of a tail because I can just tuck that towards the inside and when we put the two can together, it'll hide the end. But that way I know it's not going to pull out. I like to leave enough thread that I'm sure it's going to stay there. Okay, so now we have attached the bib to the front of the two can. Next, in the next lesson we're going to attach the eye. So be sure to find your sequence beads, buttons, whatever you're going to use to make the two cans eye. 10. Adding the Eye: Okay, we're ready to add in the, I've pulled out the bib pattern piece because I have the drawn on in a little dashed line and that will help us place it on the body where it's supposed to be. I have a little bit of white thread left in my needle. I'm going to use that to do the. I'm just going to tie a knot in the end. Again, I'm going to bring over my assortment here of beads and O, I'm going to use Q for mine, because that's my very favorite way to do the, for these two cans. But I wanted to show you other options in case you don't have sequence that work. You can use the pattern piece to help you figure out where the eye needs to go. By just putting it back on top of the white piece. Grab your needle and you're just going to take your needle and bring it from the back to the front and you're going to punch right through the center of that circle. It might take a little trial and error to get right on the right spot. I've got it right through the center of the circle because that's where I'm going to attach these sequence. Once I have the needle placed, then I can just carefully take the pattern piece and pull it away. Now I know I have it just in the right spot and I didn't have to make a marking or anything like that. I'm going to go ahead and pull my needle through till it stops at the knot. Now I can attach whatever it is. You could put a button. There's a bright red button that I could stitch on right here. It depends on what button you have. Shank buttons have just one hole in the bottom. You might need to do a couple of stitches to use something like a little tiny four hold button or a two hold button. We could use this great glass bead would make a really nice eye. I could just make a couple of stitches up through that, then if you want to use sequins, here is my favorite eye. I love doing them this way, is I'm going to make a stack of sequins. I have a black one, which is a ten millimeter. It doesn't really matter. It's the largest one. I'm going to put the largest one on first and it should be a dark color. Then I'm going to put on a medium one. This is, I think, a six millimeter. I picked bright pink because I thought that would be fun. Then I'm going to put on a tiny little four millimeter. You could also use a bead for the center one if you don't have any really tiny ones. That one's also a dark color. You can see when I stack them up like that, it makes a fun eye then to stitch the sequence, I just make one stitch to hold them in place. If we imagine that this is a clock face, I like to make my stitch so that it leans towards 01:00 And I'm just going to stitch all the way to the outside of the whole stack and pull that down. When I do that, I think it makes it look like he has like a little sparkle in his eye. That one little stitch of white there is my stacked quin eye. You can make your eye from whatever you've got. Then to finish that off, you want to bring it to the back again. We're going to tie a knot again, just like we did at the end of the bib. I'm going to make a little bite into the felt, right next to where the threads coming out. I'm going to pull that through until I have a small loop. Pass the needle through the loop once twice, lay it down flat, put a finger on either side to hold that steady and give it a little pull. Then again, I'm going to turn it off, leave a little tail because I know I can hide those on the inside there. I've got the eye. 11. Attach the Branch & Feet: Next step, we're going to add the branch to the front of the two can that we've been working on. The branch is made from this little rectangle of brown or gray or whatever color you want to use. We're going to use the glue stick. Once again, the branch we're actually going to make just a little bit three dimensional. We're going to fold this or roll it up into thirds basically. I'm going to put some glue stick on it. And then I'm going to fold the long edge, one long edge to the center. Then I'm going to fold the other long edge to the center. I'm going to roll it up like a jelly roll. Like a Swiss roll, but I'm going to let the glue hold it altogether. Okay? I'm going to take my glue stick and just be generous with the glue on the inside. What will be the inside, the whole way. Okay? Then I'm going to fold up one long edge, about a third of the way. Okay. Then the other long edge, I'm going to fold back towards me. Overlapping. Okay, And then I'm just going to hold it with my fingers and let the glue grab on and hold it all. Fold it up like that. I wanted this branch to have just a little bit of roundness, a little thickness to it. Okay? Once the glue is set and it's holding in place, we're going to put the branch on the front of the two can you can pull out, you have a pattern piece that has some dashed lines marked on it that will help you place the branch again. You can lay it on top. And now we're going to put the branch I like to put the seam, can see that there's a little bit of seam. I like to put that towards the two cans body so I don't see it. And I'm going to set that right on those dashed lines and then I can pull the pattern piece out of the way. Maybe I'll set it underneath that scooched, there we go, pattern there is where the branch goes. It's a little bit diagonal. You can see, you can adjust yours how you want to. I feel like it needs to go up a little higher. Okay, your bird should be centered in the branch. Now we're going to attach the branch to the body. By stitching his toes, his feet. You probably want to switch colors to whatever color you want to stitch the feet. This could be any color that matches your beak. I'm going to use yellow because it's going to show up really well here. I'm going to pull off another piece of yellow thread. Go ahead and thread my needle. We're going to stitch these toes by making some long stitches. This is the third stitch that you're learning. Make some long stitches over top of the branch. I've got my needle threaded, my knot tied. We're going to two batches of toes, two feet. I'm going to pull over the sample one here so I can show you. We're going to make a little group of stitches on the right side and a little group of stitches on the left side. We're going to stitch in two places. I'm going to pick this up, I'm just going to pinch the branch onto the body. And I'm going to put one set towards the right hand side. I'm going to come up through the black felt right at the top edge of the branch. I'm spacing this from the edge. This is maybe the width of a chopstick. It's maybe half of the width of your pinky. I'm coming out right at the top of the branch, and I'm going to make a long stitch over top of the branch and go down right at the bottom edge. I'm only stitching through the black, but I'm letting the thread loop over top of the branch. Okay, there's 11 stitch. And then I'm going to do two more, basically right next door to that, as close as I can cozy that up. I'm going to bring it up again at the top and stitch down one more time. Right at the top of the branch and down. Okay. And then I'm going to do the other foot. I'm going to space that maybe about the width of my pinky. I'm going to come over towards the right hand side and I'm going to do the same thing again. Might go over just a little bit more. Okay. Coming out at the top, I'm going to make three stitches over the branch. One, two, last one, okay. Then one more time, we're going to tie that off on the back, so we've got the feet stitched. I'm going to flip it to the backside and I'm going to make a knot right here at the bottom of the branch, pulling my loop loop. Going through the loop once and twice, getting caught on the tail a little bit. I'm going to put my fingers either side so I can pull the loop down tight and trim off the end. Okay, so now I have feet and a branch attached to my two can the next part we're going to put all of the two can body together. 12. Stitching Around the Body: Okay, now it's time to put the front and the back together. We need the other black tu can part. And we need our piece that has the beak so we can assemble these three together. First, we're going to put the front of the tocan onto the front of this piece. A couple of places you want to look at to match it up. There is a notch cut out of the top edge of the two cans beak. Your face piece should overlap that notch that the top of the beak and the top of the head match up. When you do that, if I flip this over and peak to the back side, your interfacing piece should be right in the center of the black felt. You can see as you look at this upside down, I've got a black border that I can see all the way around the edge, the whole way around the two can. That's going to give us a space to sew that we aren't going to hit that interfacing piece. It's a little bit smaller. On purpose, you want to adjust your piece so that it's as close to the center as you can get it. It's even amount all the way around. Then you're going to take the back piece, the other black piece, and we're going to match that up. I'm going to match that to the front. I'm just going to check it all the way around. I want to match the tail, the front. Those two should match up and stack on each other as perfectly as you can. Okay, I always check the fit first. Make sure I've got everything lined up. And then I'm going to use my friend, the glue stick again to base those layers together. Okay, I'm going to do the front first. I like to put the glue onto the interfacing piece. I'm going to do just the very edge of the beak that'll be inside. And then a little glue on the whole piece. Okay, once again I'm lining it up that the top edge of the head is at the top edge of the beak. And I'm flipping it over to make sure that I've got it centered. And I'll hold that for a few seconds. Once I've got it where I want it, it's easy to adjust before the glue sets, so you've got a few seconds to move it around o then I'm going to add glue to the backside because I want all these layers to stay lined up one with the other. Carefully line this up tail and the front, and the back, and the top of the head and just hold that in place. Okay. It's starting to really look like a two can now, huh? All right, once we've got those layers put together, now we're going to stitch the outside edge of the two can. And we're going to do that in three different parts. We're going to start by stitching the black part. We're going to start at the top of the head. We're going to go around the back of the head, around his back. We're going to sneak underneath the branch, go around the tail and all the way up until we meet the bottom edge of the bib. Then I'm going to switch colors of thread because I'm going to stitch this in black all the way around here. Now I want to switch to white, because I don't want to see big black stitches there. Then one more section we're going to change. We're going to do a slightly different stitch when we hit the straight part of the face here. We're going to make one little variation there. When we get to that part, I'm going to start with the black. I'm going to pull off a piece of black thread and go ahead and thread my needle. And we're going to stitch this again using the whip stitch, which is the same one we used for the beak. The very first one we did. Okay. And we're going to start it the same way. I'm going to pick up and pinch between my fingers. I'm going to start right here at the top of the head, right where the black felt starts. And I'm going to come through again with my needle between the two layers so that I can hide my knot in the middle. Okay, I'm coming through the two layers and pulling, then I've got the knot and the tail end of my thread. I'm just going to tuck in between the layers. And now I'm going to pinch the two together. And I'm going to do a whip stitch. If you remember whip stitch, we're going to go the same direction every time. And I'm making these about 16th of an inch, about a toothpick width. The part I'm going to move over and pull through, I'm going to move over, I'm biting in about a 16th away from the cut edge, and I'm moving over the same distance for each of my stitches. I think we're going a different direction than we did with the beak. I think we did the beak the other way. Whip stitch works. Either way, you can work right to left or left to right. The only thing to remember is that you're just going through the fabric the same direction every time. Now I know that it's really hard to see the black stitches against the black felt, but it's the same stitch that we did here on the beak, I should look like the same diagonal loops that are going around. And I'm just making my way around. I'm pinching the two layers together with my fingers to make sure that I've got them lined up. And I'm just going to speed this up. You can continue stitching when I get here where the branch is, I'm just going to bend the branch out of the way and continue sewing underneath it. And then I'll just put it back where it was. So I'm just going to push it out of my way so I'm not stitching through it. Okay. When I get right to where the white meets the black, right at the bottom edge of the bib. I am going to tie this off to tie a knot here. We're going to do this the same way we tie a knot on the beak. I'm going to make one more stitch right on top of the last stitch that I did. Okay, there's my last stitch. I'm going to put one more stitch on top of it and pull. So I've got a little loop. My thread is getting a little bit short. I'm leaving a little loop open. I'm going to bring my needle through the loop once twice, go in the same direction. Okay? And then I'm just going to pinch the felt right there and pull gently, that'll pull a knot right down against the edge. And then I'm going to bury the end of the thread inside. I'm just going to take my needle and put it between the layers of felt and I'm going to bring it to the back side. Okay, Back a little ways into the body so that it comes out again. And I'm going to pull my needle all the way through. Then I'm just going to trim off the thread right against the surface of the felt that will hide that end. Okay, now I'm going to switch colors to do this little section, the curved section of the breast, the beak or the, the breast or the bib of the two can. Okay. So I'm going to switch to white and I'm going to keep whips stitching until I get to this corner. Okay, I stitched up to the corner where the face meets the beak. Now it would be really hard to continue whips stitching here and trying to stitch the flat beak to the flat face. Like the angle doesn't work very well. So we're to a different kind of stitch to do this last section. And it's going to help secure the whole face and beak all together. We're going to switch over to do a running stitch. And running stitch is like the most basic kind of embroidery stitch. It's the one that looks like a dashed line and it goes up, down, up, down, up, down. Okay, I've got my thread on the front side. I'm going to start by making a stitch, going from front to back. I'm going to move over about a toothpick width. And I'm going to go down and I'm going to go through all the layers. I'm going through white, black, and even the beak. And my needle is going to come out on the back side about a toothpick width away from the black edge. That's my goal, is to have it come down in the front and come out in the back. About the same place on the front and back of the face. I'm going to pull that through, hopefully you can see a little bit. There is now just like one little dashed line stitch. Now I'm going to do the same thing, coming from back to front. I'm going to flip it over so I'm looking at the backside. I'm going to move ahead the width, I want the stitch and I'm going to go through all the layers through the interfacing through, um, the black, the white. If you're using cardboard or plastic, this one might be a little tough to get the needle through. You might need to punch a hole with like a pin or with your needle before you stitch it. But now I've gone through to the front and I'm in the right place lined up with the line of stitches. Now I'll pull this one through. These few stitches are slow, but we're attaching all the layers together. Now, I'm going to go ahead a little bit. I'm going to go through all the layers. I'm going to check where it's coming out on the back side, looks good, pull that through. I'm just going to continue this back and forth. I'm peeking on the front and the back going right next to where the eye is. My throat got caught in the branch. There we go. And I'm going to continue this all the way to the top of the head. It's about five stitches. Five or six. Okay. I think I'm at the top edge of the bib. I've got my stitches in place. I'm going to do one last knot, which I'm going to do on the back side, the same way we've been doing them. I'll take a little bite into the felt, pass my needle through twice, pull that knot down, and then I will bury the end of the thread back into the body of the two can and trim the So okay, there is our assembled to can. The last step is we're going to add the flower and the leaf to the branch. 13. Adding the Leaf & Flower: Okay, last step, we're going to add the leaf and the flower to the branch. You can decide where you want it on the branch, but I like to put them over on the left hand side. And so I'm going to put the leaf on the back overlapping the branch a little bit. And then the flour is designed to kind of stack up one flower piece on top of the other. You alternate the petals so it makes this kind of two layered flour. If you cut yours out of your tight eyed fabric, you can decide which parts of it you want to overlap the other. I like the white showing on mine. I've stacked them up and I'm going to stack that at the end of my branch as well. Now you can use a little bit of glue stick to hold those layers together, but we're going to stitch through all the layers and attach that all together as one stack. You can do that in any color you want to. I have a little scrap of yellow. I think I'm going to use that to stitch a center on my flower. I'll thread my needle back with the yellow thread. Okay. Going to make just like an X, a cross stitch through the whole stack of leaf and flour all together. Right at the end of the branch, I'm going to pick this up and pinch everything together, make sure it's all overlapping. And I'm going to go through all the layers. Branch leaf flour, flour and I'm going to one long stitch that way. Then I'm going to just cross it over and make like an X or a plus sign. You can stitch it any way you want to. If you have an extra button or a bead, you could use that as the center here. But I've got a little X of stitches, a little cross stitch, like a bonus stitch there. Okay. And then I'm going to tie that off on the back of the branch. That will not only help the branch stay rolled up on that end, but attaches everything together really simply. Okay, one more time. Bury the edge and then I'll trim the other one. Thread always gets caught somewhere. There we go, trim and trim. Okay, now you can decide how to finish your two. Can I like to make these into ornaments like that you can hang up? I have one in the plant that's in my kitchen window. You can use them as a holiday Christmas ornament. You can put a magnet on the back. The simplest way is to take a little scrap of thread, and I've got a little yellow here. By turning it over to the back, make just a stitch through the top of the head, pull through. And now I can take this long thread and just tie the two ends together. Now I have a little hanging loop. Okay, I'll show some pictures of other things I've made with these two cans. You can add a pin to put it on your coat, or even cut some larger leaves and put two cans and leaves together to make a fun mobile that you could put in a kid's room. 14. Wrap up: So we were right. You can. You've finished your two can now. So I hope that you will post a picture in the project section below. I would love to see how your tide turned out because everybody is going to be wildly different. And be sure to share any tips you have or anything you learned while you were doing the tide of your felt. I hope you had lots of fun and you want to make a whole flock of two cans after you've finished this class. Remember the tie technique you learned and all of those stitches that you did, you can use for all kinds of other projects. I would love it if you tagged me on Instagram. If you want to post a picture of your tu can in progress of your tide while you're waiting for it to dry, be sure to post a project picture. Leave a review for class. And of course, if you want to see anything else I'm up to and all kinds of other things I've designed. You can always visit my website at Becca Ran.com Thank you so much for joining me to make tie to cans. And I hope you come back for another class soon.