Level up your Sewing with Fabric Birds

1. Intro: I've been a bit obsessed with making soft sculptured Birds lately since I love sharing what I know, I'm gonna show you how to create your own soft-sculpture birds using fabric and a few other materials. I'll be showing several tips and techniques that make this project accessible to the average crafter or even a beginner sewist. Hey folks, I'm Luci and I run a little micro design business out of my home studio where I design Doll and puppet patterns. Usually I designed for the embroidery machine, which I like to call my sewing robot. But I design sewing patterns too like our class project, which is this fabric crow. The skills you learn in this class will enable you to make a black crow like our class project. Or you could make a white dove for a wedding or Christmas, or maybe a few pastel birds for the spring, maybe with long legs and cute fluffy head thingies, the lessons in this class will show you how to sew a bird with easy soft-sculpture wings and tail on any sewing machine. And even though there are lots of curvy lines on this pattern, I'll show you some tips and techniques so you'll be able to accomplish that curvy stitching on your regular sewing machine. Don't worry if you can't sew a straight line, You can still do this and level up your sewing skills while you're at it. Then we're going to take things up a notch by adding wired wings and legs. This will make your bird fully poseable. You can use it to decorate or even create a little stop-motion animation if that's your jam. So if you want to learn to make fabric, birds quilt curvy lines, and make your own wired feathered friends of this class is for you 2. Project: CROW: Our project is a fabric crow with quilted wings and tail for a soft sculptured effect. You could share a photo of your Fabric Bird, either in progress or finished. This bird also has wired legs so you can pose it in many different ways. Everyone has been enthusiastic about these crows. They look really complicated, but they are actually quite simple to make. I'm going to stitch up a murder of them to decorate my house for this fall. And they might even stay up a little bit longer. But you can use this same crow pattern and just change the color to create different birds. If you're feeling daring, you can modify the shape or size and create your own custom birds using some of the techniques you learn in this class. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna teach you some skills that you can apply to a lot of sewn projects, not just Fabric Birds. If you look in your project resources, there are downloadable files. You may need to be watching the lesson that says project. Or if you go down below the video, you will see some tabs underneath the video where you can get to the project and resources and may say files or exercise files. And what you'll find in there are one document that has all of this in it. There's the tools and Materials List, so you can take this shopping with you and check things off if you need to. There is the instruction checklist. This isn't the full instructions. Normally if I sell a pattern it will have photo instructions that are several pages long. But because you have this class and you can see everything being done, there's just a checklist so that you can work through as you make a bird. Then there are three different patterns for this, it is the crow pattern, and it's actually a mix-and-match of flying wing. And you want two wings for your bird. There's also a Tail and a body piece. Those are again in the downloadable project files. So we'll be using this pretty soon. And then also a diagram of different stitches that are very useful to Doll makers. So check those out and make sure that if you wanna do the project, you have all of these files that are included with the class. I wanted to briefly talk about a few things on how to use these patterns because these are a little different than you would normally find. On the sewing pattern, for example, on the doll, on the body here there is a dotted line which is for stitching. And then there's a solid line that's for cutting and it even has little pair of scissors there. The stitching line has needle and thread. So that's the difference here. And there's a wing placement, eye placement, leg placement. Those are all pretty standard. There's also a pile arrow or a nap for if you have a furry, fuzzy fabric, you would want to make sure that the fuzziness is pointing down on the body. But a way for the Tail, it goes this way and for the wing doesn't really matter so much on the wing, but probably pointing down or out would be best because that's the way that feathers grow. And then also for the Quilting on the wing and the Tail. This is a little bit different than what you would normally see because I'm not providing a cutting line. What we're going to do is stitch first. And the direction starts here where it says start Quilting right there at that point. And you go ahead and stitch all the way around and each of these little feathers, you go up and down, up and down. And I will show you a little bit on the sewing machine how this has done. Once you get all the way to this one, you go here and then you do all of these little feathers and do this row. And then you go across here and all of this row here. So you never have to tie off or not your thread or anything. This is just one fell swoop. So that's a little bit about the pattern. You don't want to cut the fabric out first, I'll show you in the next lesson how you actually want to use these. I hope you'll be inspired to create your own Fabric Bird and post a photo of your bird in the class projects section. It can be a finished version or at any point while you're making it. If you have any questions, look for the class discussion area where you can ask a question and I'll help you out 3. Tools & Materials: I'm going to spend a bit of time talking about tools and Materials because the quality of any project depends on your tools and supplies, not just your skills and techniques. So don't think of this lesson as a supply list. It's really a way to build your skills by learning how different tools and Materials can change the look of a project, or how tools can make your tasks easier or even vastly improve the finished look. I've developed some techniques that benefit from certain supplies. And in this lesson, I'll share those secrets with you. First of all, you're going to need a sewing machine. This project does not work well with hand sewing because of all the Quilting stitches. So a sewing machine IS recommended. I also suggest using a fresh needle in your sewing machine. And I'm going to suggest you use a size 90/14, either a Quilting needle or regular universal needle. But the 90/14 is a thicker needle and that helps to go through multiple layers of fabric and batting. You're going to need some sharp fabric scissors that can cut through multiple layers of fabric as well as some little details. Scissors, especially ones with a nice sharp tip so that you can get into the little clipping of the curves. Some sort of marker for writing on fabric and stabilizer is suggested. And I'm going to use a crayola washable marker for this because I know that it will wash out if I ever need it to. And I'll talk a little bit more about what you need or what kind of marker you need in the next lesson. Some sort of tool for stuffing. I like to use hemostats and you'll see me using these because you can get stuffing wherever you need it. But these are not necessary for this project. That's more of an intermediate/advanced tool. You could use a pencil or a chopstick or anything you'd like to stuff this bird doll, they're very easy to stuff, so don't worry about the advanced tool, but if you have them, use them. I'm going to be using fabric glue in this project. And there's two that I like. fabri-fix is a really nice fabric glue, it dries clear. And also, if you have a hot glue gun with a detailed tip that will work nicely too, and I like to use fabric glue sticks rather than the cheap glue sticks. You can also hand-stitch if you don't want to use glue. For the hand stitching, I do recommend a longer needle like a tapestry needle or a Doll needle, something that's a little longer because you need it to be able to go all the way through the bird's body, especially for the eyes. So a longer needle is helpful, and it's also more heavy-duty and thicker for the thread, I suggest using a strong thread. Look for one that says heavy-duty. You could also find button and craft thread as an option. Some of them might say it here on the side of the spool, heavy-duty. You can also use an upholstery thread. This one says extra strong upholstery thread there at the top. So different options on the thread. The reason that I suggest using a stronger thread is because if you need to pull tightly on that needle and thread, you can do that and these threads won't break. Your regular sewing thread will break much more easily than these. You'll need some pins or clips for holding your fabric together while you sew. And some needle nose pliers for working with armature wire. And these have a little wire cutter right there on there, most of them have a little wire cutter towards the edge. Or you can use a separate wire cutter, but something that will cut wire as well as help you manipulate and bend it. Let's talk about the fabrics and materials that you'll need for making these bird dolls. If you want to make a crow Doll, I recommend some black fleece. But for this video, I'm actually going to be using this light blue instead. And that's because black does not show up well on camera, you see, you can't see the stitches on top of it, whereas this lighter color shows up good on camera and you'll be able to see the stitches. So I'm just using this as an example. But obviously if you wanted to make a crow like the body that I'm making in this one, you would want to use something black. It's important for this particular project and the way that I'm showing how to make these dolls that your fabric has stretch to it. Stretchy fabric is needed because normally on a bird body or something you would have a gusset or a dart. And this pattern does not have that. So we're going to rely on the stretchiness of the fabric. You can also use a T-shirt, black t-shirt type fabric or cotton jersey, something like that. That's what I used on this one and the Quilting on the wings, it still shows up really nicely with a foam stabilizer in there. But the fleece just has a puffier look to it. You, maybe you can see the difference between the fleece in this one here and you've got a lot of puffiness on the Quilting, whereas the t-shirt fabric, Jersey just doesn't have as much puff to it. It's still nice and you can use it. It's nice and soft. But the fleece just has that extra little something. It's also not too expensive and it's not too hard to work with. So I'm recommending fleece for the particular project that we're doing. But again, you could use any fabric. You could even use a woven fabric like a Quilting Fabric or some kind of cotton like that, you will get this frayed edge, but that's not so bad when you're talking about crows that are kind of ragged looking birds anyway. It's not the worst thing to have those frayed edges. So if you wanted to use something like just regular quilting cotton or Muslin or something different colors of that That would work as well. But I'm going to stick with the fleece for this class. And a third of a yard should make one crow. If you want to make more than one, you'll need more than that. But a third of a yard is enough to make one of these crows Birds. Another thing that's going to make this project easier is using this tear-away stabilizer. This particular one is sulky brand called tear easy. I really love using this. I go through a lot of it. It's part of my technique. It's very thin like a tissue paper, but it's not tissue paper because when you stitch on this, it tears away from that seem very easily and we're going to use that feature to our advantage when we're actually doing the Quilting on these bird dolls. Another stabilizer that is key to this particular type of bird doll that I'm showing in this class is this Annie's Soft and Stable. And I'll show you what the label for that looks like this is actually a foam. It's very much like the headliner foam and the like the car ceilings, but it has fabric on both sides. There is also a version that is fusible. I'm not using fusible, but you could if you wanted to. But mine is not feasible because I'm just going to be sewing it in. And that is in-between the two layers of fleece. And this is giving the wing an extra puff to it, the Tail and wing Quilting have a nice extra puffiness to it because of this foam stabilizer that's in-between. The reason that I'm using black is because that way you don't have to cut the stabilizer to size. And I'll show you that in one of the lessons. But you'll see how using black kind of eliminates a step if you don't have the black foam, you can also use regular quilt batting or the white foam or something like that, and just cut it smaller than your wing and put that in your quilt sandwich as well. And we'll get to all that in a future lesson. If you don't want to use the foam or the quilt batting, you could also use another tear-away stabilizer that's thicker and Sulky makes this one called Stiffy and it's very heavy-duty. You can see, you can't really see through this one as easily as the light one that I showed. But this also tears away cleanly from your seams. So you can use this also. It's not going to give you as puffy or stiff of a wing, but this will work. And these packages of stabilizer run maybe $3 or $4 at the sewing shops. Of course, you're going to need sewing machine thread in your machine for both the top thread and the bobbin. And I do suggest that for this bird, you would probably want to use a thread that matches. If you're doing a black crow, you would use black thread, both top and bobbin. If you're doing a different color, match your thread or contrast it however you prefer. But I do like to use the same color in the top and the bobbin. You'll need fiber fill enough to stuff the body of the bird, the wings and the Tail don't have this kind of filling. They use this stabilizer, but there is also black fiber fill available now I found it at both Joanne's and Michael's have bags of black fiber fill. And the reason why that matters, I'll show you a sample of a prototype bird that I made with a thin black fabric. And you can actually see the white through here. And some of the white stuffing actually is coming out of this then fabric. So I don't really recommend the thin jersey fabrics like this, but if that's all you have, like maybe a thin t-shirt or something, you can use it. Just try to find one of the fiber fills that will not be so obvious if you can see through your fabric. That's why I'm pointing out black fiber fill is available. I like to use glass beads for the eyes of my birds. Just plain old black glass beads work fine. There is, these are seed beads and the 2-0 seed bead size is for a little bit of a larger eye. And then if you wanted a really small beady eye, the size 6-0, I've got both here. I've used both. You could use a larger one if you wanted to, and it would look like a, like a baby bird if the eyes are much bigger. Now let's talk about armature wire because this is the part that scares most people away and this part is not difficult. We're going to use the wire for the bird's feet. And also we're going to use some in the wings so it makes the wings poseable and that's a great feature to have. You can have these hanging from your ceiling in different wing poses. And then of course with the feet, you can pose them and have the feet grab onto things. So there's a lot you can do in the wire is not hard to work with. I do recommend using an actual aluminum armature wire and it comes in two different sizes. There's the thick and thin is what I call it. This one I buy at Michaels Crafts store. They carry both sizes in the polymer clay. Look there and then you can also buy it on Amazon or other places. Look for armature wire and we're going to use the thin wire 1/16". This is about the same as a 16 gauge wire. This is some jewelry wire that's 16 gauge. The difference is the armature wire, I've got an open package here, It's much easier to bend. So it's much easier on your hands if you're using the armature wire. Whereas this, I'm not even sure if this is aluminum or what this is, but it's much harder to bend, it's stiffer. This is lighter but still strong. And also armature wire can be bent back and forth many times before it breaks, whereas the jewelry wire is gonna be more brittle. So I suggest finding the armature wire if you can, but if you can't or you don't want to pay the $5 or so that this cost, then you can use, like I said, 16 gauge works well for this size, or you could use larger and smaller and just get a different look. So use what you have is really one of the more important messages here. But if you do want to really get into making some nice armatures, I recommend the armature wires. Then finally, you will need some tape to cover the feet if you want to leave them just the bare wires, you can, nothing wrong with that and you can paint over these or I like to wrap them with a floral tape. And the reason floral tape is great is because it stretches. It's stretchy and sticky and it sticks to itself nicely. If you wanted, you could just leave it brown. Floral tape is usually sold in green. So you'd want to paint over that with just a regular craft paint. And this is optional, but I do like to use electrical tape for keeping my wires together. You could also try this for the legs of the bird, but it might be too shiny and show the edges. I have not tried that. Usually floral tape is what we use to cover the feet. And then you can add any kind of craft paint if you wanted to paint over the bird feet, that's an option too. Those were the tools and materials that I'll be using for our Fabric Bird project. You can substitute with your favorite Materials and get a completely different looking bird. Play around and try different looks. Now let's put all those supplies to work in the next lesson and see how useful they can be. 4. Templates & Sandwiches: When most people see a sewing pattern, they want to cut out the paper patterns and cut out fabric pieces. But we're not going to use that method. I'm going to show you an easier technique used by Doll makers. We're going to sew first and THEN cut out our fabrics. This allows us to stitch small parts that would be difficult on tiny pieces of fabric. It also gives us a way of Quilting the wings and tail. All you have to do is trace and stack. Let me show you. Let's actually get started making this bird here. I'm going to start out with the body, the Tail, and the wing. Again, like I said in the project lesson, you can download these files from the class resources. And I'm going to use this tear-away stabilizer that I showed in the Materials. And let's start with, I'm gonna do the wing first. And you do need to either weigh this down, or you could use some tape to tape it down, but you want to make sure that this is not slipping and sliding. You don't need a light tracing box or anything like that because this tear-away stabilizer is so thin, you can see through it very easily when you print out your patterns. Also make sure that this 1 inch square is actually 1 inch. Just verify that your printer printed that correctly. And yep! that's 1 " right there. Okay, that's good enough. I'm going to use the fabric safe marker. I'm using a crayola washable mark when you're choosing a color for your marker, especially if you're going to be using black or dark fabric. Make sure that you can still see it when you're on top of your fabric there. So I can still see the purple here that does show up enough that I can actually stitch on this. If you're using something lighter or if we're using black, it just makes sure that you'll be able to see as you stitch. So choose your color wisely. Trace my starting point right there. And then you just trace these lines all the way around. If it helps you, you could add the arrows, but you may not need that as you're stitching. It does not need to be perfect. Even your stitching doesn't need to be perfect when you are stitching this on the machine. If you want to modify it a little bit as you go, that's fine. Do your own feather patterns, that's great. You're going to need two of the wings. So go ahead and do that twice. Here I'm tracing a feathered lines for the Tail. We can speed through this. When you get to the body, go ahead and trace the stitch lines and the cut lines we're going to be using both. So I'm going to just make my own version of the dotted line. For the stitch line. You don't have to trace all of the cutting line, but at least trace this little divot at the back of the Tail so that you get the Tail shape cut out correctly. And then I'm gonna go ahead and on my stabilizer, mark the the leg and the wing, but I'm going to have to transfer that to my fabric eventually. And it's also good to go ahead and put the direction of stretch just to remind you, and if you have a furry Fabric, do the same with the pile direction and that's it for the body. When you're done with all the tracing, you should have one body tracing. You should have two wings. And we're going to need a left-wing and right-wing. Here's why. It probably doesn't matter for you. I went ahead and just trace them in one direction because if you're using black thread on top and bottom bobbin thread, then you can go ahead and make two like this would be to write wings. But then when you're finished, you just flip one over. That works fine. Or if you want to do it this way, you can flip one over and then go ahead and stitch them this way. It doesn't really matter as long as you're using a top and bobbin thread that match if they're different than obviously you're going to have a different look on each wing. So you would need to definitely flip it in that case. So to Wings, a body, and a tail. And what we do with those is make Sandwiches. Let me show you. For each of your tracings, you'll need two pieces of fabric. And for the body, the body has done different than the wings and tail. For the body. For this style of bird, we would want to have right sides together. And if you have any kind of pile, make sure they're both in the same direction. I just cut this in half so they're not actually in the same direction. We'd need to flip it. And then again, right sides together. I'm going to use the smooth side of the fleece just because I liked that look better, but you could use the fuzzy side as well. And then put those two. That's my body sandwich. There's no stabilizer on the inside of this. Just two layers of fabric right-side together. And then my template goes on top, and that is my sandwich for the bird body. And we're going to stitch directly on that dotted line for this one. And I have to pin those layers together. Do be careful when you're stitching of where your pins are I feel like this method of having the paper template that you stitch directly on the line. It gets you a better seen than if you cut the piece out first and then try to do like a quarter inch seam allowance on something like this. The fleece shifts around because it's thick and bulky. This paper tear-away stabilizer also helps to stabilize the fabric while you're stitching. So I feel like this is just a much easier and also more accurate way of stitching. You see, I didn't cut my fabric quite big enough and I've got a little piece like my edge of my Fabric is up here and I'm not going to catch it in the scene, so I'm going to have to fix that. So do check for that when you're putting your template on, make sure that your seams are going to actually be on the fabric. The wings and the Tail are done in the exact same way. So I'll show you on the smaller tail and then I'll do a wing for you. I've got my fabric piece and I've got it folded and I don't want it folded, I actually need to cut that in half. It'll be easier. And this is because the fabric, the pile direction. And on the wing and the Tail, you want the good side of the fabric. And again, I'm using the softer side of the fleece. I want that facing out, so wrong sides together on this one. I want my little piece of stabilizer inside. So I've got two pieces there. And then just position you can kinda feel with your fingers where that piece of stabilizer is if it's too small or you could also just make a bigger piece, it doesn't really matter. And if your template piece is a little bigger than that stabilizer, that foam, that's fine. It's not going to really kill anything. You're just going to have less puff in the area that doesn't have stabilizer. That's all. Pin all those layers in place. I'm pinning through the foam and everything. If you need longer pins that could be useful. Quilting pins, two pins, something like that. The wings are done exactly the same way. And the way that I get my two pieces of fabric is I just go over to my fabric and they lay my template down and go, Yep, that's I need that big and I cut it even bigger. I'm going to have some extra, again, the Wings, you want the wrong sides together. So here's a wrong side. Here's a piece of stabilizer that's the foam stabilizer that I'm choosing to use. And then wrong side down on that too. If you're using something that is furry, you'd want to make sure that the for is pointing down on both sides. But I'm not using Fourier, I'm using the smooth side and then lay your template over so it covers that foam and everything is perfect. And you do both wings this way. Okay, I've got all my Sandwiches done, so I've got two wings, the left and right wing. Hopefully you can see those markings on there. I've got a tail that has also the stabilizer in the middle. And then I've got the body which has no stabilizer and that one's right sides together. These others have the fabrics wrong side together. This bird body is going to be turned right side out after we stitch, but the Tail in the wings are not. So that's why they're different. In this lesson, we traced our templates onto a tear-away stabilizer and stack those templates onto our fabrics with something puffy in the middle. As a reminder, the bird's body does not have anything puffy inside. And we put the right sides of the fabric together. But on the wings and tail, there's a puffy stabilizer like quilt batting or foam stabilizer between our fabrics. And those pieces were stacked with wrong sides together 5. Sewing & Quilting Fabric Birds: Fabric Birds can be stitched or quilted on any sewing machine with a straight stitch. If you know how to do free motion quilting, you can use that skill for the wings and tail. If you have an embroidery machine, you can make that machine do all the Quilting work automatically. But for this lesson, I'll show you how to stitch those puffy feathered details using a regular sewing machine with a straight stitch. Even if you're not great at sewing a straight line, I'll show you some tricks that can make your bird look extra cool with the quilted details. We're here at the sewing machine. I've got a fresh needle. It's a size 14 that was mentioned in the tools and Materials section. And I'm just going to do a stitch length of two with a straight stitch and stitch on the dotted line that we drew on our template. Fairly straightforward to do the body just start at one side of the Tail, stitch all the way around, pivot at the beak, and then stitch back to the other side of the Tail. Make sure you backstitch at the beginning and end of your same. Otherwise this one's very straightforward and we'll just kinda speed through this part. If you're watching this video at regular speed, remember that you can either speed up or slowed down the video if you needed to go faster or slower, especially I'm going to speed through some of the stitching. But if you want to see it in real-time, just slow down your video player. We have a lot of stitching to do on these wings. So first of all, change the stitch length on your sewing machines so that it is either one or one-and-a-half millimeters. This is gonna do two things for you. It's going to make the machine goes slower. So it's easier to stitch those curves. If you have a longer stitch length like 23, 4 mm, it's moving too much fabric at once and it's harder to get those little curves go down to a stitch length of about one. Another thing that's gonna do is those close together stitches are going to have a very tight perforation on the tear-away stabilizer. It will come off much more cleanly if you have a short stitch length of, again, one or 1.5 mm is where you should set your Sewing Machine. Start at the top of the wing and then just work your way all the way across the top until you get to the bottom feathers. And these are just the up and down, up and down go all the way up to the next line of feathers and then all the way back down to the tip. Backup again. And you just keep doing that over and over for this bottom row of feathers. When you're sewing through these thick layers, Here's a tip. First of all, you're following the line on the stabilizers so you know where to sew. But let the machine pull the fabric through, let those feed dogs that are underneath the bobbin case there. Let those push the fabric through. You should not be pushing or pulling forward and backward. All you're doing is using your hands to steer left and right. So you're rotating the fabric as you stitch through and make these curves. Know pulling and pushing, just left and right like a steering wheel would move. And as long as you're steering the fabric that way and not pushing and pulling, this should go much smoother. If you try and push and pull, you might break it needle in there and we don't want that. Once you get to the next row, you just go ahead and stitch upwards towards there and do the next row We finished the second row of feathers stitches. We're gonna go back up and you can go ahead and stitch right on that top line again, you don't need to do the parallel line that's just there for you to know where it is. And then go ahead and do that upper row of feathers stitches. Then you're done. Go ahead and backstitch and pull it off the machine. And don't forget, there's actually two wings, so make sure you get both of them. The Tail has done exactly like the Wings. I've still got to stitch length of one-and-a-half millimeters on this. And you're just going up and down, up and down. Mostly straight lines with those little curves at the tail of the feathers there. The, That's it for the stitching. Remember to take breaks from the sewing machine and stretch out your hands and your shoulders. It takes time to stitch all those details and you don't want that dreaded sewing soreness that comes from hunching over a sewing machine for an hour or more. I would love if you shared a photo of your bird doll in progress and ask questions if you need any help. Use the class project section or the discussion area for that. Now let's see how all these pieces get turned into a bird 6. Cut & Turn: Now that all the stitching is done, we can cut out the bird parts. I'll show you where to cut and give you tips to get a clean edge. Will also be turning the body right-side out and marking the placement for the wings, the eyes, and the leg. I've got all the stitching done. I've got the body to wings and a tail. And you can see how nice and textured they are on the backside. That's how they're going to look when we're done. I love that quilted look on the body. Don't take the stabilizer off until after you've cut because we've got that cutting line that we traced, you don't have to use that. It's really only important here at the Tail because you'll see when we add the Tail onto it, why that actually helps us. I'm just going to clip that away. And then the rest of it, you can just use a quarter inch seam allowance and cut. One of the advantages of using a stretch fabric like a fleece or a t-shirt knit is that it doesn't fray. So you don't have to worry about the seams unraveling. And that's a big, huge bonus because we can cut our seam allowances smaller and not worry about things coming undone. Okay, at this point, we're still not ready to take that stabilizer off because we have to mark our placement line for the wing, the eye, and the leg. I'm just going to take a little chalk marker or anything that you use that can show up on your fabric. So that later on we're not guessing. If you forget to do this step though, it's really easy to just get your pattern piece from the paper printout and figure out where these lines need to go. It's not the end of the world. Okay. And then this stabilizer tears away very easily. Other tear-away stabilizers are not as easy. I will warn you about that. I can really get in there and make a make a mark. You only need this on one side by the way, you could go ahead and put it on both sides, but it's not really necessary. And we're going to need that to be actually on the inside so that we see it. And when we're working later on, if you're going to add legs, what you can do, and I prefer this actually is go ahead and make a whole all the way through both sides. And that way you know that you're getting the whole for the leg wires will go all the way through. Now if you're not going to put legs and feet on, you don't want to put a hole in there. So that's my mark actually in the same width. The I. We're gonna have to get that on the other side. After we've turned it. This wing placement here, you can just cut a little slit and mark it that way. Now when we tear the stabilizer away, we don't need those marks are on the fabric. The reason also, I suggest that you do remove the stabilizer. It's not the end of the world if you leave it in. But because we want to take advantage of the stretching of this fabric, it's better to take all that stabilizer off and you can get a nice stretch. But if you have little bits left behind, don't worry about that. Now to turn them, this is super easy to turn right side out, but I need to make sure I know where my wing is going to go. So when I turn it and it's not a big hole, going to just try to transfer my mark from here and make a little mark where that I've got my finger in there and I'm trying to market with that pencil. And then the other mark for the wing. And again, you don't have to use this placement line for your wing. You could put it wherever you want. Usually I like to eyeball it. Every bird has a little different personality. So you could do that too. And same with the eye. Although crows eyes do need to be in a particular place. Okay. Let me see if I can get just press that with my fingernail there so that here I can put a mark right there. Another option I'll show you. If you had your stabilizer all in one piece. You could also use that and just lay it over after you've turned it and do it that way. And I any kind of like stuffing tool would work. Go ahead and press your seams out, get that big all the way out. Because birds have beaks. There it is. Get all those seams, you don't need to press it. I typically don't press anything that's going to be stuffed because the stuffing handles that for us. And there's my eye placement mark that I can just barely see someone when I try to make it A little more pronounced there. Yeah. And I lost my wing placement. So if you lose your markings, Ms might be a better way. Actually save your piece of stabilizer that you've torn away. And just kinda line in a, generally it doesn't need to be perfect. This is not a, let's get it perfect type of craft here. But because I'm trying to show other people how to do it, I like to give you ways of how to figure things out. Like, Oh, I messed that up. How do I go back and make it work for me? This is one way. Save your trash. Yeah. That's pretty good for the wing. Pretty good for the I. Hopefully we can. This chalk marker is probably going to fade. So not the best black fabric is hard to Mark. And we'll be okay. That's the body, so we're ready to stuff him next. Let's go ahead and get the other pieces and there's no marks on the others. So there are a little easier cutting out the wings though. I'm not gonna do this all in real time, but I will just tell you that you want to do about an eighth of an inch away from your stitch line. You could use the stabilizer side or you could use, I think it's actually easier to see the quilted lines here. It's up to you, whichever one you want. I like to leave. Don't cut too close to the stitches here. You want to leave a little like a tab shape. It's the weekend attach the wing later. On this particular one, I did use the stabilizer on the inside, that gray black stabilizer, it does show a little bit, but it's not obvious. You could also remove the stabilizer before or after. It's not with the wings and tail, it doesn't matter with the body. We just wanted the lines on there with the wings and body. You can go ahead and remove this. And it should, if you used small stitches, it should tear away from your seams stitches very clean. You'll have little bits left behind. And this is one of those things that you might just want to Turn on the television and listen to something. I mean, it's a meditative thing. I don't mind doing this. It's not tedious to me at all. But some people able exempt with these little bitty bits that get left behind. And you want to go slowly and gently. Don't go too fast. Don't try to rip it off. You don't want to displace the Navier stitches, just take your time and get all of this stabilizer pulled out. And this is another reason why I do love hemostat. I loved them for so many reasons, but they're good at pulling out like if you needed to, you could use the hemostat or tweezers to get any like small pieces. But these were pulling away pretty cleanly. And that's another reason why I mentioned in the tools and Materials section how the sulci tear easy makes this just so much better. There's other tear-away stabilizer is out there. I've used a lot of them. But that sulci tear easy really pulls away from the stitches. For this technique, it's almost mandatory. I believe peloton has a lightweight tear-away as well. I haven't tried bears, but that should work too. I just know I really like this one. I wanted to show here on this wing. I tried to do some free motion embroidery, which I have done before. I used to know how to do it on that same machine, but today it would just did not work for me. You can see the reason you see these blue threads. The tension was horrible on this. And you can really see like the stitches are long and that's why I'm having a hard time pulling away the stabilizer because the tension is loose. The stitches are very loose and loopy and also because the stitches were further apart. And so it's hard to get all of the bits of stabilizer. Whereas on these where I use, I just went back over to regular machine sewing and let the feed dogs pull it through. I used a stitch length of two. I started at one-and-a-half and then I moved up to two to make it go a little bit faster. And these look much better. This stabilizer pulls away very clean. So if you're really good at free motion, you won't have this problem like I do. I confess, I'm not the best at free motion anymore. I would rather Program my embroider machine instead, but that's the wing. Ignore this here because that was where I should not have tried free motion. I should've just stuck with the regular machine. We do the same thing for the Tail and the other wings, so we'll just pull that away clean On this wing I used to stitch length of one-and-a-half, which is a much shorter stitch length and it's actually tearing away more cleanly than the one that I did, the stitch length of two. And that's why I advise to use a short stitch length of anywhere from one to one-and-a-half is ideal. It will slow your machine down, which makes it easier to do these little tight curves. And it also perforate this tear-away stabilizer so that it's easier to tear-away. I'm getting all the little bits out much more easily. When the stitch length was one-and-a-half on this wing. You can see how because I used a blue thread that shows up and I know I said I was going to use a blue fabric. Fabric, fabric. A blue fabric instead of black, but the stitching is showing upgrade on this. So I'm not feeling bad about that. And you can see the blue thread that I used in here. You can see those stitches. I'm going to switch over to a blue fabric for the assembly of this though. Let's go ahead and cut these out. And again, an eighth of an inch is really all you need. You can do as much of the curvature here or as little as you want. I like to do just a little bit. Make sure you don't cut your stitches though. You don't want that to come unraveled. And I'll give you a tip. That works well for me when I'm cutting small things like this. I like to put my scissors down on the table. See how the edge of the scissors is actually resting on the table. And I'm just doing my cutting motion. I move the fabric piece. The scissors stay in one place. While the fabric moves. It's just a little trick for doing detailed cuts. Now I'm going to say these details for the small scissors. I'm just going to round that part of the wing off. The top edge is easy. Line already started that. So there it is, right there. You do want to save some scraps to do the Thighs of the bird later. For these little indents here, I like to use the small details scissors and just clip in there. It's easier to see on the back. I think. You don't have to do this part. This is just sort of a little extra. And then you can always come back and round those wing tips or leaving pointing. Now with this technique where your Quilting the wings and your quilt sandwich, you're not turning anything right-side out. You will be able to see that phone in the center. But it's really not It's not obtrusive to me. It doesn't bother me at all on a finished bird. If you're looking for it. Yeah. It's an issue, but usually people aren't inspecting that that close. You're using this for for house decor, Halloween, anything like that? It's I like it. I'm fine with it. I like that method a lot. But if you don't like it and you don't want it to show, you could use what we talked about in the Materials section where you cut a piece of batting that's smaller than the wing and then just quilt around that, that works too. And then you don't have to see that. But we do have the raw edge on this particular method that we're using, we're going to have the raw edge and that's not going to change. The body doesn't have a raw edge because it's turned right-side-up, but the wings and tail do. And it's just a little quicker way of doing it, but it also makes a nice, get really nice curves without this would be a real hassle to turn this right side out and get these all poked out. And so this is a way around that that was one weighing, I'll do the other wing later and then the Tail, same thing about an eighth of an inch away. And I can usually I'll just round it off. And then if you want to come back and get the little divots at the edge of the Tail. You can do that. Another tip with the this phone state foam stabilizer. When you cut closer to the seams, it's compressed at that stitch line. So you won't be able to see it as much because it's compressed there. So you see how that's a much thinner line versus this one here, which is much thicker because here I've cut very close to my scene and here I've got more of an eighth of an inch. So if you're brave enough, go ahead and cut as close to that same. But on your magnifier glasses or something because black is hard to see. So that's how we do that. That's another trick. And I'm just gonna do a few little divots here in the edge of the Tail. And it's important to have these little sharp details. Scissors might, the tip is actually getting a little dull on these. So I'm gonna have to get that either sharpened are replaced. We've gotten the body, we've got to wings and we've got to tail. So we're ready to assemble our crow. And I'm going to switch over and use a blue fabric that I've already stitched for that so that you can see things much better. I also wanted to point out that on this last one here, I didn't do the little divots. I just left it like this. So you can see a little bit quicker. If you like it better, that's fine. You don't have to. I just realized there's an edge here that's bugging me. But that's just a nice smooth edge that was faster to do. Both look good. All the different parts have been cut out. And you saw technique for getting clean cuts with sharp scissors by resting the scissors on the table in moving the fabric. You also learned how to turn the bird body right-side out and mark the placement areas for the wing, eyes, and leg. Now let's move on to more assembly 7. Wire Bird Legs: I confess, I messed up while filming. Usually I create the wire armature before I stuffed my birds. But in this video I try doing it later on and it failed. But don't worry, these class lessons are in the right order. It's easier to add the wire armature for the legs and wings before you stuff the body, especially those legs. So I'm going to show the lesson here, but you'll see how hard it is for me to force wires through a firmly stuffed body. I'm going to keep this in the class because watching me do it wrong can help you learn to do it right? Right. You should add the wires after the cutting and turning steps, but before the stuffing. Your project won't already have wings and tail attached like the ones you're about to see in this lesson. So that might be a little out-of-order, but it's okay. You can mix and match those steps. We're going to give our birds some feet so it can stand on its own. It's got the three toes in front, one in back, just like a real bird. So to start out, we need three pieces of wire. One is 36 " long. And we're going to fold that in half and overlapped by about an inch and twist those together so that we and then fold dislike. This is gonna be kinda like a coat hanger, weird shaped coat hanger, flatten it out. And you want that to be in the center as much as you can. And now we're going to twist this. This is going to be the legs and the front toe. And it takes a lot of twisting. Nope. Even more twisting. A little bit more. It's getting tighter. Okay. Now that my hands are tired and my wire is well twisted and actually came apart right there. And that's okay. Because I'm going to bend these back. We need to actually soften the edges of this. We don't want these sharp ends poking through. And that's why I like electrical tape is really great for this. You can use a different kind of tape that's fine. But electrical tape is made to stick to wire and keep wires from poking through. So that's why I like to use the electrical tape. It's available at any store, any hardware store or even like a what do they called? Like department stores like Walmart or dollar tree has at places like that. It's cheap, it's easily available and it's great for covering the pokey ends. So we've got our Twisted wire here. We also need two pieces of 12 inch wire and those are gonna be the feet. For the legs. You've got your mark on the bird for where the leg is going to go. Whether it's a marking that you did from the sewing pattern or the machine embroidery did it for you. And if you need to get a like a long needle, because usually there's just a mark on one side, but that needle through and just come out so that it goes straight through. So it's even so, you know, mark both sides. And then you can just clip a little tiny hole there. You could use an all or some sharp scissors for this. Here we go. Needs to be big enough that this taped part can get through there. And I actually like to make this thinner as well. Go through more easily. We're going to poke it all the way through first. And just like with the wire on the wings, if you're stuffing is too much in the way. You could use some kind of a needle or an all or something to kinda help guide that through, make room, through the stuffing, kinda make a tunnel in the stuffing. Ok, once that's inside. Now we're going to bend it. And we want that middle part to go up into the bird's body. And depending on the size of your bird, it may go just into the body or it may go up into the head. I'm recommending using the same size of Armature for legs and feet no matter what size birds you make. I've got actually three sizes that are out there now of the patterns that I make, this size of feed and Legs works for all of them. I'm going to have to kinda push that stuffing out of the way. I want it to be right up against the fabric. I actually had to force the wire up into the body. So this is why I'm suggesting put the wire in before you stuff the bird. It's much easier. Okay. I had a hard time on this small bird getting it up in there. I'm going to suggest that it's easier to add the legs and even the wire for the wings. You could do that before you stuff the burden, add the Tail and then put the wire in first and then stuff it and close it up with the Tail When wire was really much simpler, but getting this curved wire pushed all the way up on the small birds, it's, it has to go up pretty far. So it takes a lot of coaxing. So I would say on the larger birds it's easier because it just goes in this area. But on the smaller birds, this size of wire, I would do it before stuffing, I usually do. And then I want about 3 " of legs sticking out. So that's what I've got here. You can go ahead and twist those a little more and bend anywhere from 1 " too. I'm gonna do one in a quarter inch. Just bend it right there. On both sides. There's my inch and a quarter right there. Okay. And those are his front toes. See how that works. Here. You can already stand a little bit. But he needs back toes. It's going to help a lot. This is our TO wire and you want to bend it in half once this is a 12 inch wire, and then give it about another inch and-a-half again, right around here and bend it out. Another inch and half, back in again. And then do the same thing over here. So we're just making three toes, inch and-a-half, bend it. And where they cross right here. You can go ahead and just twist that. Okay. Now you're left with something. Looks kinda like, I don't know cactus, I don't know what shape to call that. It's a bird foot. And we're going to twist each one of these three toes. Just kinda shoveling together and start twisting. It doesn't matter which direction you twist really. Okay. And then these two ends are going to wrap around the leg. Okay, that's our bird feet. And the way that this works is you choose one of these toes to be the back TO and then the other two can be the two front toes. It doesn't really matter which way you do it, but I like to put the C if I can get a good view of this this ankle part of the foot here. You put it so that it fits like that. And then go ahead and just wrap these tail ends of the wire around. I'll do one and then do the other one the other way. It doesn't really matter how you're doing this. You got these sharp ends though, and you don't want those poking out. So use your needle nose pliers to wrap those as close to the wire as you can to the leg wire is kinda pinch them in. And then again, the electrical tape is the best to use for this, but duck tape or some other kind of tape can also be used just to cover up those wires. It's also going to take this leg and foot together. You might need been the toes out of the way though. Just wrapping that down to the bottom of the foot. You don't need to wrap the foot with this tape, although you could I haven't tried that yet. And choose which TO you want to be like the front one. Usually the longest one would be the front one. I think I'm gonna do it. This is the back TO these three are the front toes like that. Then once you play around with it, he's going to stand up nicely. Do the same thing on the other foot. You could leave it like this. I mean, honestly, having the wired legs is another different kind of look. But I like to finish it off with floral tape. You can find this in green or brown. Typically, I don't know if there's other colors. I haven't seen other colors. There's no right or wrong way to do the floral tape. Cut off a piece. It's too hard to work with the whole role. But I'll show you a, just a way to do this. You want to wrap it tightly and you do need to stretch the tape as you were app. That's what brings out the adhesive and makes it stretchy and stick to itself. Just wrap. I mean, it's that simple. If you need to bend the toes out of the way, you can do that. Somebody saw a picture of these birds and thought like, Oh wow, that membrane that you have on the legs that must be really hard to sew. And I'm like, No, it's floral tape. It's actually very easy. She was like, Oh, yeah, I could do that. Okay. Once you get down to the bottom of the leg, go ahead and just start with any of the toes. Doesn't really matter. And wrap them up. And when you get down to the tip of it, leave a little bit of extra, we're going to pinch that closed and then just go back. So it's double wrapped. And you wanna do all the toes that way and then you'll go back up the leg. If you run out of tape, just get another piece and start over. Do be careful around the ankle area. I'm just gonna kinda wrap that around and then we can pinch that later on. He's told her in my way, so I'm just going to move them right there and then come back and you do that for the whole thing. And we'll just speed through the rest of this. The birds feet and legs are all wrapped in that floral tape. You can just pinch the ends to give you some little claws. Know, come to a nice point. This is sticky, so I do like to usually paint mine and with just regular acrylic craft paint is a nice touch. You can change the color. But honestly, I mean, if you don't mind the stickiness because I'm getting fuzz sticking to this. So I do mind the stickiness. You can bend the feet a little bit. He's already able to stand. We're going to create the Thighs and a future lesson, just hang on for that one. In this lesson we added wire armatures for the birds legs and feet. You saw how to twist the wire for extra strength and build a four toed barefoot. You also saw how to extend and Armature into the body so the bird will balance and stand on its own. I hope you notice that the aluminum armature wire is not difficult to work with at all. It's actually an easy process that requires one simple tool, the pliers with wire cutter. We also wrap those feet and legs with some electrical tape and floral tape to make it look nice. 8. Attach the Tail: After we have our legs in place, we can stuff the bird body and add the Tail when closing things up. You'll see on my sample bird, there was no leg wire in place yet. But as I said in the last lesson, it's easier to have at least the leg wire inserted into the body before you stuff the bird, you don't have to do all the toes, but at least have that wiring up inside the body. You can either hand-stitches, glue the Tail in place. I'm going to use glue in this lesson, but if you want a hand stitch, you can use the same ladder stitch method on the Tail that you'll be seeing in the wing lesson. We've got all the parts cut out. The bird has been turned. I've switched over to the blue bird that in this sewing video, you may have noticed I was using some black, but black is very hard to see on camera. And for the hand-stitches, you really need to see what I'm doing. So I'll use a contrast thread that shows up very well on this blue fabric which the camera likes to pick up easily. So that's why I'm doing a blue crow. The wings are done, the Tail is done. The bird is turned right side out. And if you did the sewing version, you're going to have the placement marks that you put on the body. If you did the embroider machine version, you'll have a stitch on one side of the body. Either way, the assemblies the same, whether you're using the embroidery machine pattern or the sewing pattern that you're doing yourself. It doesn't matter because putting all these parts together is the same. I'm going to start by stuffing the bird. And nothing special here. Just make sure that you get the beak and head stuffed firmly so that when you put the eyes on it, can kinda set into the head and not be too mushy. You don't have to use hemostat, but they're my favorite stuffing tool and I do recommend them if you have them, use them. If you hate using them, use whatever stuffing tool you like. And we'll just speed through the stuffing. I've gotten my Bird pretty firmly stuffed. Now the head is firm, nice shape to the beak. And you notice how, because the fabric stretches, we get a nice rounded body without any kind of little wrinkles in the fabric or anything like that. And I do want to make sure that I get Tail stuffed close to the edge. That's going to hold our tail in place better if you stop way up here, your tail will be more floppy. So get the stuffing all the way down to that tail. Now I'm gonna glue my tail. You could also hand stitch, but I like gluing it with some hot glue and then that tail just fits right in like that. And then this triangular piece that you cut fits right there. Same with the bottom. It'll fit right up with this line of stitching where these stitches stop. I'm gonna do the bottom first. If you need an add a little bit more stuffing here and you can make sure there's not stuffing coming out the back that doesn't look very clean. And this is just a raw edge. You don't need to turn it under because we're using the stretchy fleece that doesn't fray. So I'm gonna do the same thing here, just a little line of glue. You do need a fine like a detailed tip, either a glue gun or if you're using a bottle of, for example, Fabric Tech, you need to have a fine tip, not a fat tip of that. Just push that stuffing in and get that lined up all the way at the stitches. If you have any little globs of glue like I was pretty messy there and just trim those off because the fleece pretty friendly with that. I didn't get mine stuck down good enough, so I'm gonna have to do that again. You can see I'm putting quite a bit of glue this time, make sure it really sticks. But don't burn your fingers. Now it's stuck. That Fabric. Hot glue works pretty well on fleece. Use it all the time. Okay, That's the bird's body with the Tail is starting to look like a bird. And at this point now the body is stuffed in, closed up and there's a tail to, we've learned how to stuff to get a rounded body while taking advantage of stretchy fabrics. This eliminates the need for more complex Pattern pieces with darts and Gosset's. And you saw how to carefully glue the Tail in position. You can also hand-stitches the Tail with the latter stitch, and I'll demonstrate that in the next lesson for the wings attachment, feel free to post a photo of your bird in progress as a class project, you can always add more photos as you work through your bird 9. Attach Fabric Bird Wings: There are many different ways you can attach wings to your Fabric Bird. You can glue or hand stitch. You can add armature wire to make wings pose or not. You can play around with creating your own wing shapes or colors to create different kinds of real-looking or fantasy birds. In this lesson, I'll show you how to add wire for a poseable wing and then hand stitch that wing to the body using an invisible ladder stitch. I'm going to put some wire in here that is optional, but I like it. This is the thin armature wire. It's very easy to work with. I've got a 12 inch piece. I'm going to bend the ends of it because I don't want sharp, pokey, pokey Adi things coming out of the wings. So I just bend a little loop. And it's just that simple. And then you can put that in. It'll fit right up in this channel here, or you could put it in the middle one too if you wanted to. It doesn't really matter. And it doesn't have to go in all the way where we want the wings. And my line is, I used an air erasable pen and of course it's already erased, so I'll show that to you again. Now the wing placement is up to you if you want to put it in a different place, but it does have that marking for where you would want to put it. Just like that. You can have it a little further back, a little wherever you want that. And if you're going to use the wire, you do need to poke a little hole. You can actually scissors probably gonna be better just at the tip, the front of that marker. And I need to do it on the other side too and be symmetrical. And you just poke it through there as best she can. And it's already stuffed. So it's kind of actually forgot about this, but leave one edge unbent. It will poke through much easier. Because you got to poke through that stuffing. And of course it's not usually this difficult, but on camera, it's not going to cooperate. Okay. And getting out the big guns. Just using my all to poke a hole there. So the wire will fit through more easily like that. And now we can go ahead and bend this other side. And it doesn't matter if it goes above or below the batting. That's up to you. There's no right or wrong. I'm just gonna do one wing first and I'm gonna hand stitch that. Again. I've got my longer needle and strong thread. That's just my preference. I'm going to start with a little knot in the body. And then just ladder stitch the top of the wing to the body first and then we'll go and do the under, underneath. The letter stitch goes, you want one little stitch in the wing? And I do like to fold that in as I'm stitching. And then the little stitch in the body, about an eighth of an inch stitch length is good here. This can be fidgety to get started, but once you get your rhythm going, it's a little easier. You can use your needle to poke that Fabric, kinda poke it so it goes under and then when you pull your thread, it pulls it up next to the body and it's an invisible stitch, even the black thread I'm using, it's hard to see. If you're using a thread that matches. This is really an invisible stitch, this ladder stitch zip through this. Okay, the top of my wing has been stitch, so I'm going to flip the bird over. We've got one more stitch from the top and come out down here that's too far, just right under, right about there. Now I'm going to ladder stitch the bottom. Same way. And I am usually going through just one layer of the fabric on the wing, Not both layers. Once you've done both top and bottom, you could go ahead and tie it off. I usually would like to start finished my not on the bottom, but the top of my wings is going to show and I've got to stitch that loosened up here. So I'm gonna go ahead and work my way back over there and clean that up. Just a few long stitches to get back over there. And that's why I had my thread that's long enough in case I want to go back like this. Just right around, let's say this area here. And that way I can re stitch and get that tighter. And I'm going to finish my not on the bottom. Just do a little stitch. And it doesn't matter where you end. You can go ahead and do the surface not through the right loop, through the left loop. Pull up slowly with the needle in the loop. So that comes all the way down to the surface. And then we go back in again, very the thread. It doesn't matter where you come out to vary the thread as long as it's couple of inches away, that thread tail is inside. That's one wing, you do the other wing the same way. You can just kinda play with the wire and get it where you want it. And then your wings will be able to pose. And you could do a flap and I'm like this. You could hold them up, you can have them down. It's awesome. Another thing dimension is on your pattern or if you're doing embroidery machine or Sewing Machine doesn't matter because just line your second wing up there. It's probably not gonna be a marking on your other side here. But there's one here just line you're weighing up so that it matches your first one. That's really more important than any placement marketing, because if this one got a little off, you also want them to line up. So pretty simple. In this lesson, you got to see how to add a simple wire that will give your bird wing and more stability, as well as make them hold a pose. You also learned how to position the wing and stitch it to the body using an invisible ladder stitch. If you've never used the latter stitch before, it is worth learning. There's a diagram of the ladder stitch and the surface not in your class resources, along with a crow sewing pattern, if you need a refresher on the stitches. At this point, I'll remind you that you can always post a photo of your project in progress. If you need any help, then you can update your project later on with a finished photo if you want to 10. Eyes & Thighs: The last part of the assembly is to give our bird the gift of sight. I'm going to use some glass beads from the Crafts store as eyes, the kind that you find in the jewelry supply section of a craft store. But you could hand paint and I, you could use safety eyes, you could use buttons are joules, anything you want. We're also going to add some more fabric on the wired legs to give the bird some Thighs and make it look a bit more realistic. Let me show you how to hand-stitches glass beads for the eyes. And then we'll wrap some Fabric scraps for the Thighs. I'm using glass beads for the eyes. And I've got a needle with strong thread and you want to make sure that your needle is long enough that it can go through the bird's head. I'm going to start by going through the head, wants all the way out and just get it straight so it lines up the other side. And to make a very secure not I'm gonna go back through again just a little bit further away. And don't pull it tight yet, but go ahead and pass your needle inside. This looped, not here. Now when you pull it in, yes, that birds beak is going to get in your way. When you pull that, you've got a nice tight loop. And you can cut those threads. If you pull on it, it'll have a little recessed and when the beat is going to fit in there. So we're gonna put on one bead and do make sure that your needle fits through your bead before you start this. I've had that problem before. And then same thing just go through to the other side. This is not a child's toy, so we're not worried about safety eyes and making sure that they're super secure. We're just trying to get some eyes on here. I do not recommend these for children. And also be careful that your thread doesn't tangle up before you pull it tight or it'll, you know, you have problems. Keep that loop open, pull that, and then just give it a little tug and even it out so that the eyes are set just a little bit into the head. Now we're gonna do a surface not as close to under that it does. We can just a little tiny stitch. Okay. Don't pull it yet. We've got the loop on the right pass the needle through, which makes a loop on the left. Pass the needle through that side. And now use your needle to hold that loop. As you pull. The knot will go all the way down to that surface on the fabric. And then you can just pass the needle back in and come out a couple of inches away. So that when you pull that thread and cut it the surface, he's getting slippery on me. It disappears in the body and now our thread is hidden. So that's the eyes. Now that we have both feet wrapped in that floral tape and the legs are done, but they still they look kinda funny because they're just little wired legs sticking out. We need to give them Thighs. And that's very simple to do. If you keep your scraps and you should keep some of your scraps for your matching fabric that matches your body. And you'd need a five-inch long piece with my ruler oversee you can see the measurements. Five-inch piece, 5 " long, and then you want 1 " on one side and a half inch on the other side, we want one flat piece here or a flat side. And that's my half-inch. And then just join those two. It doesn't need to be a perfect curve or straight line. It can be a little wonky if you need it to. So I've got two of those cut. Again, 5 " long, an inch on one side, a half-inch on the other. And this straight side here is what we're going to put next to the bird's body. I'm just going to start with a little dab of glue on the leg. And that's going to hold my fabric in place while I wrap it around. Again, the straight side goes up against the body. Get it to hold on there. Give yourself some room and then just wrap it around and you can pull it if you need to pull it tight. If you're fabric stretches, That's fine. If it doesn't, that's fine too. And just keep that flat side of the strip up against the body. So it makes this little ruffle like that and then just glue the end in place. And if you want, you can put a little glue up there and just kinda push it up into the body. That's all I do for the Thighs. It's not super fancy. But I like the look of that. Has that kind of texture like almost like feathery look. I'll do that other side too. While adding the birds eyes, you learned how to attach beads using needle and strong thread. You can also play around with the different sizes of the eyes to get a different look or create your own eyes with paint or other objects. We also used a simple strip of fabric to wrap the top part of the leg to give the bird midi little phi area, that extra little touch 11. For More Inspiration: At this point are bird doll or crow is finished. You learn how to trace on the tear-away stabilizer for more precise method of stitching. And we took that to our sewing machine and learn how to stitch small, curvy quilted seams by slowing down our machine with a long stitch length and steering with our hands rather than pulling against the machine. You've also seen how to hand-stitches using an invisible ladder stitch and a surface. Not both are very useful when doll-making or doing other hand sewing projects. We also talked about using armature wire to add Bird Legs as well as poseable wings. And we talked about finishing touches like glass eyes and these little beefy Thighs. I hope these skills are useful for you and you feel inspired to make your own bird doll to decorate your home or desk or wherever. If you'd like to see more bird patterns checkout my shop at Valley who creations.com. I've got a few patterns there, including ones that use the embroider machine to do all the Quilting and seems to make birds faster. You might also want to check out my friend Abby's book. It's called the artful bird. There's a list of links on the last page of your downloadable resources. If you want to continue learning about making Bird Art dolls. Got some books and different websites. I'll point to two over there. Now that we're winding down, please take a moment to leave a class, review. It really helps me to hear if this class worked for you or if there's room for improvement. I actually love all forms of feedback. So let me know what you thought of this class. I hope you enjoyed it. And don't forget to show me your own bird project, even if it's very different than the one we made today, I get such a thrill when I see others learning and creating based on what I've taught. So please share your projects and be proud of what you make