A stuffed animal/pillow hybrid.

Lately I’ve been getting divine crafty inspiration from on high; as I was sitting in my Capstone class earlier this week I got the idea for this sweet little stuffed owl seemingly from nowhere.  I sketched the concept in the margin of my notes and went back to my discussion of Lily Bart, almost forgetting about the owl until I cleaned out my tank top drawer later in the week.  (Yes, I have a tank top drawer, and until a couple of days ago it was very full.)  I’m making an effort to get rid of a lot of stuff before we move, and part of that effort involves getting rid of anything I haven’t worn in the past few months.  One of those things is this brown tank top.

Ill-fitting brown tank top.

It started out white, and I never wore it.  At some point I dyed it brown because I thought that would make me wear it more (which obviously didn’t work as the fit, not the color, was the problem), but I was wrong and it continued to languish in my tank top drawer with no sense of direction or purpose.  The “dotted line” below represents where I cut.  Out of laziness, I tried to use as much of the original side seams as possible.

Please excuse my photo-editing skills.

After I cutting, I turned the top inside out and sewed up the top.

Inside out, after sewing.

After sewing up the top, the inside looked like this.  I then turned it right-side out again and stuck it in an embroidery hoop and attached the eyes.  For the eyes, I used scraps left over from a men’s shirt I previously turned into an outdoor pillow along with scraps from a t-shirt I dyed a cream color with tea and used to make another pillow.  I used one of my vintage snuff glasses and a tin of Burt’s Bees lip balm to get the right sized circles for the eyes, and I secured them with fabric glue before doing some very remedial embroidery, mostly for decorative purposes, but also to tack down the edges.

My remedial embroidery in all its glory.

Almost finished with the eyes, before adding the beak and stuffing.

Rather than sewing the bottom closed, I made a small cut on the wrong side of the hem at the bottom and fed some embroidery floss through, making a sort of drawstring, then cinched it as tightly as possible.  There was still a small opening where stuffing could come (or be pulled) out, so I hand stitched that closed.

I see a lot of potential to have fun with this project–buttons for eyes would be really cute (but they’re a choking hazard, so be careful!), and depending on what fabrics you have on hand the potential for interesting color combinations is really limitless.  I toyed with the idea of adding applique wings in another coordinating fabric, and I may try that out at a later date as well.  Having said all that, I’m really happy with the finished product, which is sort of a stuffed animal/pillow hybrid.  I already have a sweet little boy who might need a stuffed owl in mind.

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• Worn Out Shower Curtain into Tea Towels
• Bird Mobile from Spool
• Day Four: Learning from my Mistakes
• Day Three: Completed Kitty!