cute owls

Well there is one thing for sure about these cute toy owls, they are great cuddly friends and they make a great present! Plus they are easy and fun to make so are ideal for textiles beginners and for the more advanced sewers why not try some free machine embroidery on the back of the owl.

 

The blue owl was the first owl I made. She was made at Young Embroiders (the group I go to monthly to learn more and more about textiles) I loved this little owl and its design so I  then made another one for my little cousin and then one for my sister however I had to make my own templates for both of them.

The white owl is called Ness. I made her for my sister as she was begging me all of last year to make her one so on her 21^st birthday a few days ago I gave little Ness to her!

 

The most challenging thing is to make up your mind of what fabric to use!

 

 

The only problem I have with this is sadly I don’t have a name for my blue owl so why not suggest a name (in the comments) and help me with my hard decision!

Quilt square

I made this quilt square for one of "Steyning Grammar School 400 Heritage Quilts" celebrating Steyning grammar school school's 400years anniversary! Each square is being made by someone to do with the school whether they are a student or a volunteer. Also each squares theme has to be about Steyning (Steyning is a small town in the country side of Sussex) and its beauty.

My quilt square is about the natural flowers you can find on the South Downs and also a species of beautiful butterfly that is found also on the Downs.
I started of by finding resources, I first researched the Steyning Downland Scheme where I found out about lots of butterflies and decided to include the species Adonis Blue in my work.

However the way I got resources for the flowers I was particularly happy with as I used my own photography.

Flowers                                  

Using stitches I loved most I hand sewed the flowers from my own photography.

Some stitches you will see in there is backstitch, seed stitch, satin stitch, fly stitch and my very favorite french knots!!!

Butterflies

The way I did these Adonis Blue butterflies was one of my favorite ways of machine embroidery. I used dissolvable fabric! After sewing onto the fabric I then put the sewing in warm water and the excess fabric went away leaving the rest as a glue, then all I had to do was wait for them to dry by the fire( picture1 ) and hand sew them onto the square.

 

If you want to find out a bit more about the SGS 400 Heritage Quilts  go to http://adukeblog.wordpress.com/

Or

http://www.sgs.uk.net/SGS-400