Make these pretty felt love birds for Valentine's Day.  With these sweet love birds you can show the one you love how much you care.  

MATERIALS FOR LOVEBIRD

White Felt 

Pink Felt in two shades for feathers and wings

Small piece of Black Felt for beak

Handsewing needle

Thread

Black embroidery floss

Metallic thread (optional)

Poly-fil

A free Lovebird Template, printed and cut out  (This pattern has a 1"/ 4CM test square.  Measure the test square, and if it does not measure correctly, check your print scaling options.)

SIZE

8 1/2"x 4 1/2"

MAKE THE LOVEBIRD

CUT

Using the Lovebird Template, cut 2 bird body pieces, 1 gusset, and 1 wing out of white felt.  Cut the beak out of black felt and tail feathers from each of the pink.  Cut one more set of wings from pink.

MARK

Using a water-soluble marking pen, Begin marking the fabric with the pattern piece still pinned to it. When you mark a pattern, you always want to begin at the pattern pieces outside edges and work toward the center. Easy, right? Let’s do it! Using a straight pin, pierce the pattern piece and fabric right through the center of the first dot. Carefully lift the pattern paper (while still holding the pinned fabric in place) and mark the fabric with the pen. Repeat on the underside of the next piece of felt so that the sides are mirror images of each other. 

STITCH THE EYES

To sew the eyes, we are going to use a basic running stitch.  It's beautiful in its simplicity, utility and function.  Vary it with size and color and it adds such vitality and expression your projects.

BEAK

Fold the beak along the center line and stitch along the long side using a 1/8" seam.

Turn right side out.  It helps to use a tool to push the tiny end through.  A chopstick or eraser end of a pencil work well for this.

MAKE THE LOVEBIRD

Take a bird body piece and the gusset,  place them with the Right Sides Facing Together and match the markings.  Pin and stitch around the outside edges of one side from tip to tail, using a 1/4" seam allowance. 

Pin the other bird body to the opposite side of the gusset and stitch.

Pin and sew the bird body together at the center back seam beginning at the dot level to the eye around the head and to the top of the tail.  Leave the area where the beak will be attached open.

TURN AND STUFF

Turn the bird body right side out and stuff nice and firm with polyfil.

ATTACH THE BEAK

Add a tiny bit of stuffing to the beak.  Pin the beak to the bird and whipstitch around the beak to attach it to the bird body.

TAILFEATHERS

Insert the tail feathers into the body of the bird.  I shifted the layers of feathers a bit to create some visual interest.  Pin in place and stitch in an inverted V shape to secure.

WINGS

Arrange the wings and pin to the bird.  Again, I shifted the placement of the wings to overlap just a bit.

Stitch in place.  I used some silver metallic thread to attach the wings and give them a bit of glam.  Feel free to add your own touch!

Trim threads and use a quick bit of steam from the iron to get rid of your markings.

Would you like to learn how to make the perch?  Come back tomorrow!

XO, Hilarie