Another Angry Bird knockoff

Back in February, I blogged about making this view of M6481, I mentioned that I gave one to a friend's son as a birthday gift, and his brother became super jealous.  Well, said brother has now had his own birthday, and I thought it would be nice to make him his own Angry Bird knockoff.  This time, I used a fuzzy red fleece instead of green, and I've shown all three birds that can be made from the 1/4 yard of fabric required. :)  Once again, I used a press cloth and fused the eyes (from felt) in place without detrimentally affecting the fleece, but this time I did stitch them in place, as well.  Not only is it more secure, but I have to say that I like the look better.

Now my boys want the two leftover birds!  Oops!  I'll have to hide them in the gift closet....

More Angry Birds

As I mentioned back when I made the first "Angry Bird" from M6481, Thing 1 - who had never showed much interest in Angry Birds before - decided that he wanted one, too....Go figure.  He chose view A, the shaggy looking "bird" with no wings or anything else but eyes.  And when we went to the fabric store together, he picked out this green textured fleece for his creature.  We needed 1/4 yard for one creature, but don't be fooled - due to the width, I got THREE creatures out of that 1/4 yard.  I cut out the pieces, and there it sat....for several months....until I decided it was ridiculous, and clearly these needed to be finished in time for the two extras to be used for Christmas gifts (yes, I'm still catching up on those posts).

Once again, I fused the eyes to the fleece via an iron over a press cloth.  Worked great!  I hadn't read the instructions (shame on me) or I would have realized that it actually said to stitch these down.  Oops!  Next time....But Thing 1 is happy, and my little niece apparently loves hers, too!  As does my friend's son who got the last one (and his brother is super jealous - ha!).  So definitely a hit!

Angry Bird Ornaments

I was looking online for Angry Bird ideas a few months ago, and one of the blogs I found has a lot of Angry Birds tutorials!  Obsessively Stitching has made everything from blanket appliques to plushies (I made one but forgot to take a picture before we gave it as a gift - but I'm going to make more, so you'll see them then.) to ornaments!  And these ornaments are billed as a Dollar Store Craft.  The ornaments can be found at Dollar Tree for, you guessed it, a dollar.  The paints are cheap - I actually had to buy a small tube of black paint, because apparently despite all of our weird color combinations for painting ornaments, we've never used black.  You need one sheet of red felt and one of white, and some white pom-poms for the Santa hats.

And voila!

I have admittedly no artistic skill, but I think these are still recognizable.  And quite hilarious!  I bought a tube of plastic Christmas ornaments, and I think there were fifteen in it, so I have five sets in progress.  We're definitely sharing these with friends!

Angry Birds!

Thing 2 loves Angry Birds.  Never mind that he's only played the game once.  He's in love.  So when I was flipping through a pattern catalog and spied McCall 6481, I about fell over.  The pattern description is basically just "stuffed toys," but let's not kid ourselves.  These are Angry Birds!  Fortunately, JAF was having a sale on McCall patterns, so I just snatched it up!  This is view D, which is basically the red Angry Bird (though in different colors on the pattern cover, and minus the black tail feathers, which I still might go back and add....I haven't convinced myself to bother yet).  I changed the colors to match the red bird, and then I went to work!

Basically, this is a round ball with wings, facial features, and a comb.  It's awesome.  I used fleece for everything except the eyes and eyebrows.  Those are felt.  The pattern calls for using a fusible webbing on the eyes/brows and fusing them to the fleece.  Now haven't we all learned that we're not supposed to put an iron on fleece?  Well, I approached it with fear and trepidation, because there's really no way to machine sew these on, and I really didn't want to hand-sew them.  And now I can tell you that by using a press cloth (mine is an old thin piece of flannel from a practically threadbare sheet) and lots of steam and even moderate pressure, you can safely fuse things onto fleece.  Granted, this is generic, non-fluffy, non-special fleece, so YMMV.

I stitched up the pieces in half an hour or less, then ignored them for over a week, just because I didn't want to do the handsewing to attach the beak and comb.  Silly me!  When I finally buckled down and just did it, it probably took me half an hour.  I should've just sat in front of the TV and done it earlier.

I left the Angry Bird knockoff on my husband's nightstand, because Thing 2 always comes into our room in the mornings to announce that he's up and moving.  And DH's nightstand is visible from the doorway, so I figured he'd definitely see it there.  I was already up and in the kitchen, but DH said that the reaction was everything I had hoped for - the classic double-take in the middle of a sentence, then the cautious "Is that for me???", followed by joy.

Of course, now Thing 1 wants one.  Go figure.