Owlets for the kidlets

I made a bunch of these scrappy owlets for all the wee (and not-so-wee!) kids at this weekend's family reunion. I wasn't sure if the kids would like them, but they seemed to be a big hit!

Crafting can be a very consumptive activity, requiring many new materials whose life cycles—as materials and then products—are not exactly environmentally friendly. Yet crafting—by nature—is very clever and creative, so I'm very interested in trying to avoid introducing new materials into the product cycle, and using what already exists.

The most perfect art supplies are those which are found: salvaged from nature (you can't get friendlier than blueberry ink, painted with a twig on birch bark peelings!), or from the street, and saved from landfill. (Added bonus: free!) Now I should clarify that I'm no saint, and love a nice, glossy oil painting with a thick epoxy finish on a pristine cradle board, but this is just something that I've been thinking about, and would like to be more mindful about when starting a new project. 

For these owls, I used mostly upcycled materials, with some new fabric (scraps) that I had from previous projects. Old felted sweaters, corduroy pants, and previously unfashionable shirts mixed with some cute cotton prints. Individually they didn't take too long to make, but the full dozen did take a few sessions spread out over a couple of weeks. I assembly-lined what I could, to minimize having to change thread colours back and forth. 

No real pattern to speak of; just sort of wung (?) it, basing the look on the many owl stuffies around the interwebs. (Seems like we're in a bit of an awesome owl craze right now!) I used a spool of thread to trace the shape of the pupils, and searched around my house for another circle that was a little bit bigger (could have just gotten the compass and traced out a template, but, you know) and found that the cap on my pepper grinder was the perfect size. 

I wanted them to be a bit rough and scrappy, so I layered zig-zag stitches with straight stitches to make them look patchy. Fun and adorable