When my daughter was a toddler, we were playing in the snow outside our front door. As we approached our pine tree, a gorgeous white snow owl flew from the tree. Owls were good.
A couple years later as I was finishing up college to become a teacher, I took a science class to learn how to teach science to kids. In one of the activities, we worked with owl pellets. (An owl pellet is undigested food the owls have regurgitated.) Things like bones, fur, feathers, and teeth. We took these disgusting looking pellets and took them apart, looking for jawbones of animals, legs, etc. to get an idea of the owl's diet. We were told you just had to use the owl pellet activities with kids. That lesson left me not liking owls so much. (And I never did use that activity with my students.)
As time went on I forgot about the activity, I forgot about the snow owl. Didn't have a thought about owls until this spring.
Thanks to Oprah I liked owls again.
I watched an episode where she and Gayle were doing a camping trip to Yosemite. Oprah woke up in the morning in the coolest owl pajamas. I liked owls again.
I thought this owl-liking business was going to stick. I've been seeing cute owl fabrics, and knew they'd make great kids quilts.
But this summer, owls were on my bad side again. Behind our back fence, across the road, sits an old metal building. In that old metal shed some owls have taken residence. Some screech owls. (They probably aren't screech owls, but they sure sound like them.) All night long they screech. It seemed though the babies cried and cried for mama all night. Mama eventually shows up, feeds them, they quiet down, and mama leaves again. And the babies cry again. And again. And again until she shows up again.
It probably wouldn't bother me so much except I had problems sleeping this summer. And the particular metal shed where the reverberation of screeching owls occurred just happened to be a straight shot out my bedroom window.
Thank goodness those owls have since moved on. They probably left plenty of pellets behind, but I certainly am not checking on that one!
I decided I need to start liking owls again. I again see lots of cute fabrics, but since I've already purchased enough fabric to make kids quilts for the rest of my life I won't be buying any owl-specific fabric.
But then I found a post over at The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle. I visit her site often as she is tremendously creative when it comes to decorating sugar cookies. Just last week she made some beautifully decorated owl cookies. Oh, how I wanted to make those cookies!
But I'm on a sugar-cookie fast, so instead I made an owl-themed pincushion using the same cookie cutter for the pattern. I used scraps from my stash, buttons from my collection, and some leftover felt, too.
- Two 5” x 5” fabric scraps
- Two buttons
- Small felt scraps
- Pincushion filling – I used fiberfill but you could use cotton batting or steel wool
- Pins or Clover Wonder Clips
- Iron
- Sewing machine
- Matching thread
- Scissors or Rotary cutter, Cutting ruler, and Cutting mat
- Owl template, download HERE
Looking for more quick and easy projects? Check out these ideas!
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You can find the step-by-step how to video for making these homemade fabric owl pincushions right here: