Robin tutorial

Right, here we go, as voted for in the christmas tutorial poll, a little 'how to' for a christmas robin.  You will need -

 background fabric of your choice (I used a red spotty print)

circle of brown fabric, 5cm diameter (mine is from a felted jumper)

circle of background felt in a colour of your choice (I used yellow), 5cm diameter

circle of felt for backing in a colour of your choice (I used green), 9cm diameter

red felt

brown felt

small white bead

green, red, and dark brown embroidery thread (I used pearl cotton 8)

a small amount of stuffing

sewing needle

scissors

embroidery hoop (optional)

16cm of ribbon or a blank greetings card for displaying

(print out the templates so the piece of paper they are drawn on is 10cm across)

Place your chosen background fabric in the embroidery hoop (or you can just hold it in your hand if you prefer), position the smaller circle of felt centrally, and attach with a ring of running stitch in green embroidery thread.

Next, take the brown fabric circle, and sew running stitch all the way around, about 0.5cm in from the edge, place a little stuffing in the centre, and pull the thread to gather it into a ball, secure with a few stitches.

With the brown thread still attached, sew the ball shape into position centrally to your base.  Next, cut the red breast shape from the red felt, and place on the left hand side of the ball (widest part of the template goes towards the top), sew on with random straight stitches in the red embroidery thread.

Cut the tail feathers, wing and beak from the brown felt.  Attach the tail using the brown thread and a few stitches at the base, positioning them with the shorter one above the longer one, continue to add the wing and folded over beak.  Then embroider two legs for your robin.  The next bit is a little tricky, still using the brown thread, after you have completed the legs, bring the needle through the robins body to the position you want the eye.  Thread on the bead, pushing it all the way down to the base, then before sewing the needle back through the bead, wrap the thread around the needle 3 times so essentially what you are doing is anchoring the bead with a french knot.  Be careful when going through the knot and bead not to pull too hard and pull the knot through the hole, what you want is the knot to sit above the hole.  If it does pull through, if your bead hole is bigger than mine is, then just make your french knot larger by wrapping the thread round more times.

Now you are ready to add some wording in red if you want to...,

and finish off by cutting down your backing fabric to a 9cm diameter circle.  Place this on top of the remaining circle of felt which is the same size and join the 2 together with blanket stitch round the edge in green.  You can either attach a loop of ribbon to the top of your robin and make a christmas decoration, or stick it on to the front of a greetings card, it's up to you!

If you make one, please do join the Lucykate Crafts... pattern pieces Flickr group so I can see what you've made.

Happy stitching!