Quilted Owl Pillow

So young grasshopper…you wish to learn something.  Something like what?  Quilting an owl, perhaps?  I’m not sure if you’re ready for that.  But that’s okay, I’ll teach you anyways. 

What you’ll need:

Pins
Strips of cloth (Personally, I chose strips.  If you prefers squares or scraps, that's fine too.  I think triangles, especially, would be adorable.)
Thread (I used a bunch of different colored thread out of one of those $1 sewing kits…why not, right?  It’s quilting, everything’s a different color anyways.)
Two buttons (For the eyes…so doing tree-buttons might be kinda weird.)
A remnant of whatever size you want your owl to be (Remnant: you can get it at most fabric shops pretty cheap.  It’s the cloth they have left that’s too small to sell by the yard.)
Needle <---pretty important

Stuffing (or fluffing, if you prefer!)
And this pattern here:

About this pattern: it’s a shaky sketch.  Obviously, it was done on the computer.  When I made my first one I used a large sketch pad (18X24) and cut everything out separately.  They’re all pretty basic shapes.   

The wings look a lot like scalene triangles with the long end rounded. 
The body itself is oval-esque with a stubby top and two triangular ears. 
The eyes are circles, and I used an extra circle cut in half to do the feet. 
The belly is simply an oval. 
The last bit, the beak, I did as sort of a caving diamond – if you want to simplify it, a triangle will work just as well! 

Tip: with the ears, eyes, feet, and wings, only cut out one shape as the pattern!  That way, they all come out symmetrical.  

Now we get to the fun part! (Actually my least favorite part).  You get to pin the fabric to the pattern!  I would personally start with the main body.  Make sure you overlap the fabric enough to sew the scraps/squares/strips together.  Then, once the fabric is pinned, you trim it to the proper shape.

Tip: I did the wings with vertical strips as opposed to horizontal.  It gave it a more homey look!  Also, I avoided using yellow for anything but the eyes, feet, and beak.

Once the fabric is trimmed, you can unpin it.  I unpinned mine one strip at a time to keep it in order!  This is where the sewing starts.  Putting your first two scraps of cloth together FACE TO FACE (That means bright side to bright side, front to front!) Start stitching along the first border.  (I poked a hole and then looped the thread over the seam and then poked a hole in the same side as the first hole.  Make sense?)  And now, dear friends, you have the beginning of your owl!  Follow the same procedure all the way up (or down if you started on the top!) the rest of the body.

Next, you do the same thing to the wings!  And, trying to make it as even as possible, you stitch them to the sides of the owl (keeping it Face-to-Face so the seam isn’t all shredded and gross looking).  I did mine about a third of the way down from the top.

From here on it’s pretty easy.  The ears are probably only one piece of cloth each, so they can get stitched on without the hassle of being quilted first!  

The belly on my owl was two pieces of cloth.  The reason I did this was so it would have a thin border: it’s just two ovals, one slightly smaller than the other.  The smaller one get’s stitched on top.

The eyes should be looking in the same direction, unless you purposely make your owl face two different directions.  When you sew the buttons to the circles, think about your positioning!  (I make an ‘x’ when I sew buttons – I stitch through diagonal circles a few times, and then stitch in the other diagonal a few times before tying it off.)

The beak and the feet don’t need any preparation after they’re trimmed.  

From here, you just pin the pieces to the owl and sew them onto the front! It should look something like this:

And now, the easiest bit!  Tape the pattern wings and ears to the pattern body and pin your remnant to it.  Cut in the shape of the owl.  FACE TO FACE sew the remnant to the quilted front of your pillow.  Make sure you leave enough of a gap to flip the owl right side out.  When the owl is flipped right side out, stuff it full of the fluffing.  Now, pinch the gap together and quickly finish sewing it.  Voila!  You’re very own Quilted Owl Pillow! =D

(This was the first one I made.  Please don't hate on it's lumpy form!  I wasn't well-versed in the art of sewing fabric neatly at the time, haha!)

Enjoy your pillow!