How To: Felt Owl Brooch

After showing you the sneak peek at this cute little guy yesterday I just had to sit down in my tea break this afternoon and write up the tutorial for how to make your own :)

If you've been reading my blog since it started you may recognise him as he's based on an old & now discontinued design I used to sell in my Etsy shop a few years ago. I keep seeing owls popping up all over the place at the moment so it seemed like a good time to dig out my old pattern!

To make your owl brooch you will need:

- a needle, a pin, scissors, and the template at the bottom of this post
- two colours of felt to make the owl's body and wings (I used a dark chestnut brown and ginger)
- thread to match these two colours
- scraps of black, white and orange felt
- black, white and orange thread
- a brooch clasp or safety pin

Optional: polyester stuffing

1. Pin the owl body template to the felt you want to use and cut around it. Repeat this so you have two matching body pieces (a front and a back piece). Then cut out two wing pieces from the other colour you've chosen using the wing template. As the wing pieces are quite small you may find it easier, instead of using a pin, to just hold the template in place as you cut around it.

2. Cut out a small orange triangle to be a beak, and two small white circles & two tiny black circles to be the eyes. If you have difficulty cutting out the small circles try cutting a square slightly bigger than the size you want and then trimming it down to make a circle. You could also use black beads for the pupils.

 

3. Position the wings on one of the body shapes and sew them in place using matching thread and a simple running stitch.

 

4. Arrange the owl's beak and eyes until you're happy with their position then sew them in place. I used three orange stitches (one at each point of the triangle) for the beak, a couple of black stitches in the centre of each pupil, and even white stitches around the eyes.

 

5. Put that to one side, and get the plain "back" body piece. Sew a brooch clasp or safety pin to it using a double thickness of brown thread (I forgot to take a photo of this stage, sorry!).

6. Now hold the front and back pieces together and sew them together using more brown thread and a whip stitch. Start from "inside" the two pieces just below one wing and work round the edge, taking extra care to make your stitches neat over the wings as this is when they'll be most visible...

... then when you've sewn all the way round finish your stitches at the back of the brooch, and you've finished!

 

If you'd like a fat owl instead of a flat owl: when you reach the bottom of the second wing stop stitching and use the opening to stuff your owl with polyester stuffing (use a pencil to poke the stuffing into all the corners).

 

When the owl is as fat as you want it, continue your whip stitches to close up the opening.

Here are some fat owls I made earlier!

 

Double click the template below to view full size and print:

If you print the template at 100% your owl will be the same size as mine. Cutting and sewing some of the small pieces for this design can be a bit fiddly - to make the shapes easier to work with (or if you just fancy making a larger owl!) print the template at a larger size.

This tutorial is for non commercial use only: you can use it for as many owls as you like for yourself or as gifts for friends but please don't make any for sale. Please feel free to borrow photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial on your site. Thanks!
 
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