Cora Seton’s Chance Creek Holiday Cardinal Craft Materials: 1 sheet red felt Scraps of yellow and black felt White embroidery floss Small amount of stuffing—in a pinch, cotton balls or tissues work
Directions: A word about embroidery floss: Embroidery floss comes in strands of 6 threads twisted together. When you are ready to sew, you will need to cut a length of the floss and then unwind 1 strand from the other five. Do this slowly and carefully, or your floss will knot up. You will thread that one strand through the needle, even up the two ends, and knot them together—so I sewed with doubled thread for all steps below, which means I cut a piece of floss twice as long as I wanted it to be once I doubled it up. Here’s a video on separating embroidery floss. Note that she cuts a piece pretty short. I did twice as long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11_udtynLtg
A word about stitching: In the interest of keeping this project as simple as possible, I have chosen fairly straight-forward stitches to use. Please feel free to embellish your project your own way! Get as fancy as you like. I have used the whip stitch and the back stitch: The whip stitch is for joining two edges together. Thread your needle and knot your embroidery floss. Start on the inside of one of the pieces of felt you are sewing together. Run your needle through the felt, match up the edge of your two pieces, run the floss over the top of the edges, and poke the needle through the felt, coming out about an eighth of an inch from the first needle hole. Continue. You are always poking the needle through the felt in the same direction. When you stop, again try to tie off your knot on the inside of the project. Here is a video that shows the whip stitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG86hhrDdzQ
The back stitch is for decorative work. The clean side will be on the outside of your project. The back of back stitch (on the underside of the project) is messy, so make sure you’re stitching on the right side. You’ll do back stitch on pieces before you sew them together with whip stitching. To make a line of back stitches, poke your needle up through the cloth from the underside. Take a small stitch—about 1/8 of an inch. Poke your needle up through the cloth again about 1/8 of an inch away from the last stitch, and then take a backward stitch to meet up with the last one. Continue in this way. Here is a video that shows the back stitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ_wVC84UmM
1. Cut out pattern pieces. Pin to felt and cut out, following directions for how many of each item needed (i.e., two red cardinal body pieces, four red wing pieces, two yellow beak pieces, and two black face pieces). 2. Whip stitch a beak piece to each body piece as shown. Make sure that when you match up the two body pieces to sew together, the beak pieces will each show on the outside of the project. 3. Whip stitch a face piece to each body piece as shown. The face piece will overlap the beak piece a little. 4. Embroider an eye on each face piece as shown. 5. Using back stitch, embroider Chance Creek 2018 on one body piece as shown: The top of the letters should be about 1/2 inch from the edge of the fabric. The bottom of the letters should be about 1/4 inch from the edge of the fabric. 6. Using back stitch, embroider decorative stars and lines on two wing pieces. Choose two opposite pieces so that they can go on either side of bird and face out. 7. Using whip stitch, join an embroidered and plain wing together, leaving a small gap to stuff. Stuff (don’t overstuff), and finish sewing. Repeat for second wing. 8. Attach a wing to each side: Put the knot on the wrong side of the body fabric, and put the needle through the body and through the wing at the center of the star/snowflake design on the wing. Take a small stich and poke the needle back through both the wing and the body. Do this two or three times. Pull secure and tie off on the wrong side of the fabric. Do a second time with the other wing and body piece, making sure to match the position of the wing on both pieces for nicest results. 9. In order to be able to hang your ornament, make a loop in this manner—or use a length of ribbon or yarn: Cut a piece of embroidery floss about nine inches long. Tie one end of the floss together, separate into 3 groups of 2 threads each, and braid together. (Taping down the tied end to a table can make this easier.) Tie off other end. 10. Position braided embroidery threads in a loop with ends meeting in between the two bird body pieces to hide knotted ends. 11. Using whipstitch, stitch bird body pieces together, making sure to stitch through the embroidery floss loop to secure it. Leave a small gap to stuff the bird. 12. Stuff bird and finish stitching; tie off. 13. If your wings flop, line them up how you’d like them to go and close to the body of the bird, and use a small stitch or two to stitch the wings together at their top seams. Wing (red) Cut two
Cardinal body (red) Cut two
Wing a achment point Face (black) Cut two) Beak (yellow) Cut two
Wing (red) CHANCE CREEK Cut two Holiday Cardinal Cra