Cardinal Christmas Tree Ornaments

One project recently that I made up for a gift exchange with the sewing group I'm in was a Christmas tree ornament of a cardinal.  It did take me almost three hours this morning to make all 9 them (yeah, I put it off till the last day, way to go, right?).  I detailed the birds up a little by adding a red bead to the wings when I sewed them on and glued a red feather fluff behind the crest on the head.  That added SO much to the look. 

The bodies were freeform cut at first, I didn't use a pattern and I wasn’t sure how small to make them, but after doing the first two using an oval shape folded in half, I made the bodies a tad longer and a lot wider (basically doing a 6” circle).  I liked the larger ones better – which were almost life sized.  The body was the circle folded in half, I used a cotton print of red poinsettias with gold trim on the leaf edges for an extra ‘flash’ look for the bodies instead of just plain red felt.

The beak was an orange felt square 1” x 1” in size, folded and sewn in on the face to be trimmed once the body was turned right side out. 

Both the tail and wings (wings were heart shaped, I scissor cut the feathers on the sides) were made of two layers of red felt, stitched around the outside and trimmed close to get a clean look. The tail was machine sewn into the bottom corner as I machine stitched it but the wings were added separately after the cardinal was turned right side out, stuffed and the opening sewn closed. I folded the wings in half over the back and hand applied them by stitching through the wings and body only in the front section, with putting a bead on each side where the needle came out. The red metallic bead looked fine and I didn’t need to stitch around the wings this way, just stitching completely through side to side had them firmly attached.

The V crest for the head was one layer of red felt cut in a V with a rounded top, invert it so the point is up and the rounded edge and half the sides were tacked down.  That went on the front after the body was stuffed. 

At that point I trimmed the orange to a triangle shaped beak, then cut a black oval out of felt for the face.  To get the black face marking settled OVER the beak I sliced up the center of the oval about 3/4ths of the way with a scissors and the beak went through the slit, the black mask was then tacked down by hand all the way around, then the 8mm black bead eyes were added. 

I had a red marabou boa so I snipped ½” of fluff off the end of that for each cardinal – plucked the loose feathers off to discard, and just put a drop of Elmer’s Glue between the V crest and the head and tucked the feather chunk in there and let it dry.  It made a red ‘fluff’ sticking out behind the crest.  VERY eye catching!!!!!

Last thing was to take my branch sticks I’d been saving, checked them all over for the sturdiest ones that wouldn’t snap/break, and cut those about 4” long making sure they had a knob or bend to avoid letting them just be pulled off.  I sewed them on the belly as if the bird was perching, using quadruple thread on the needle.  The thread had to be on thickly.  If the stick does dry out enough and breaks at some point they can just cut the thread and have the ornament without. 

Then I added some fishing line for the hanging loop, double knotted that and it was done. They turned out really cute.  I can only do 3 an hour though.  Doing all 9 took about 3 hours start to finish.  Technically they can be fancied up further by running a very thin line of glue along the tail and wing edges and applying gold or red glitter there but I didn't feel that was needed on these.  They looked stupendous!   Everyone loved them.