I make things out of felt because I'm homeschooled, that's what we do.

The other day one of our little friends was having a birthday so we cracked out the gift making supplies and got to work.

We found this super cute owl pattern in a magazine, but they didn't have a to scale templates to cut out, so I kind of made up my own pattern and just went with it.

Here's how I made it.

I'm not sure how well you'll be able to follow my instructions, but here they are anyway.

What you'll need:

Felted wool sweaters(everyone needs a good collection of these)

Paper to make your patterns out of

Good cutting scissors

Pins and needles

Matching thread

Embroidery floss

Buttons(for the eyes)

Stuffing(wool or what ever else you have on hand)

Sweet tunes to listing to while you work

   and a sewing machine might be handy too.

First you need to decide how big you want your owl to be, any size will work I think. The template on the right of the picture(above) is the body, you need to cut 2 of these, one for the back and one foe the front.
The other template is the face/wings. It needs to be slightly bigger than the body.
Wrap it around your paper pattern to test the size before you cut into the sweater!
The top triangle of the wing pattern is the beak/face, that part will go over the straight edge of the body piece.

Here's another view of my pattern, the blue piece of paper is the pattern for the base of your owl. You want it to be the same size as the bottom of the body piece(the side parallel with the straight edge.

    Cut out the base and the body pattern.

Pin the body pieces right sides together and sew around the entire thing, starting at one edge of the bottom and leaving enough room for your base to fit on later.

Stuff the body, make sure the ears are nice and firm!

Sew the base to the bottom of the body.

I kind of muddled through this. The instructions said to use the machine and keep the seems inside... but that wasn't working for me.

So I just ended up sewing it all together by hand, making sure to double my thread and go around twice.

Before sewing it closed completely add a bit more stuffing, if needed.

You don't want a limp owl!

Cut out the wing/back.

Sew the wing/back piece on by hand onto the body of the owl. Make sure it's nice and secure, especially if your creation is going to end up being loved  by a little person.

This is what it should look like once the back piece is all sewn on. Make sure you leave the tips of the wings free so your friend can fly!

Cut felt circles for the eyes. I found that a medicine bottle cap was the perfect template for mine, but you can fiddle with the size until it looks right.

I attached the buttons onto the felt circles before sewing the whole thing onto the face, but it's up to you and how you feel works best.

You can just stitch the eyes on if you want, but I find that the blanket stick gives it a more finished look.
  I wasn't going to add the tummy patch, but I decided(with prompting from my mom) that it would look good.

Just blanket stitch that to the tummy, and your done!

Here's the finished product!

The owl was a hit! The birthday boy loved his new friend, and the other kids want to play with it too.

The owl's name is now 'Hunter' a pretty great name if I do say so my self!

This is my first attempt at (sort of) step-by-step instructions.

I don't know how I did, but you might see some more of my projects up here on this blog at some point...

We'll see.