Inspirational Owls

My sample owl

One evening when I took my dogs out one last time before turning in for the night, I heard the distant hooing of an owl perched in one of the trees in the woods behind our house.  The tree branches silhouetted against the October moon creaked eerily as they swayed in the breeze.  The owl hooed softly in the distance, and I got a sort of Halloween feeling.

Inspiration!  That would be the perfect next sewing project.  This will be a sweet Halloween treat for my Sewing Club “ghouls”.  So I immediately checked out the internet and found a few ideas.  I had to sift out some projects because of difficulty, but I came upon this project by sewtara.com that I figured was a good fit for my sewing teens…an adorable felt owl!

Student owl in progress

I usually email the girls a reminder of our weekly meeting and tell them what we will be doing for the next few meetings to keep their interest.  When they heard we were going to make owls, they were very excited.  Thank goodness for that, because sometimes I don’t know how my inspirations will be received by the girls, but I think after all these years of teaching art, I have a pretty good idea what will work and what won’t.

Sewing Club meets every Thursday after school and, last week, I think we had the best turn-out ever!   This week we had a conflict and we met today instead. I have several new members who just seemed to ease right into what we were doing the week before.  The challenge of having a club like this is often its inconsistencies.   Students don’t come every week for one reason or another, or come late, so they have to catch up on what they missed, or wind up not finishing a project because we have moved onto something else.  Right now, we are finishing up the Scrap-Buster Fall Pillow project, so girls are in various stages of completion.  Several of them came the day after last week's meeting in their unscheduled time to finish up the pillows in preparation for next project.  But we put the pillows aside for this week, so the girls could all start the owls together and branch off next week to machine sewing their pillows or working on their hand stitched owls.

Student work

Since November is swiftly approaching, the owl will be the one of the last in the series of fall projects.  We will be working on a simple tote bag and then the drawstring bag that I referenced in an earlier post, come November. So here we go with another fall fling!

Now that my club is fairly large, I need to make sure I have enough materials for them each week.   I have been crafting for many years.  I have made lots of different things and have amassed a huge amount of materials like scrapbooking paper, fake fur, ribbons, embroidery floss, all sorts of fabric, felt and wood pieces.  After the hurricane a few months ago, our basement flooded and it became apparent that many of the things I had stashed away in the basement had to be thrown away, sadly.  But my interests have changed over the years, so it was time to move on anyway.

Student owls in progress

Saturday is usually my day to scout out materials for the next week.  After doing a little shopping at the mall and going to the grocery store this Saturday, I didn’t have too much time or energy left to get the felt I needed for this week’s owls.  I remembered that from the days of making felt ornaments and things of that sort, I had a wide assortment of felt in the closet in our computer room.  As I said, I don’t really use too much of that anymore, so I am going to donate it to our club.  So I didn't have to make a trip to the thrift shop or the fabric store and I am clearing out my closet (for which my husband will be eternally grateful!)

So we forged ahead to hand stitched stuffed owls, which, I might add, are turning out be be a lot cuter and much less scary than the one perched in a tree hooing softly in the woods in my backyard!  I can't wait to see how they all turn out.

Student owl almost ready to be stitched