I have been thinking for a while to make some of my own Christmas decorations and I came up with the plan to make some cute little Robins. i have seen variations of these in most shops but I as always was a woman with a plan and came up with this little guy…
This was a really easy thing to make and came together in no time at all. First I started off with my big ol bag of raw wool…
As you can see this was washed a little on the hot side and has started to clump together, this is not ideal for most projects but for this it didn’t matter. Wool should be washed before use, I have read many things online about what to use, some craft stores sell specific soap, others advise a gentle handwash detergent, I have used both and both are equally as good just don’t do what I do and have the water too hot, to dry it I hung it in a pillow case and left.
To make the inside I used a felting pen with 3 needles…
I found this better for making a ball as I wasn’t using the mat much just rolling and stabbing until I had a ball shape, At this point I did however use the mat to make some small triangles to attach as the wings.
Before started to add colour I added the silver string for hanging the robin. I picked this up at Remenant Kings.
This is now the point that i argue with myself… eyes. Now on occasion I have added the eyes prior to the colour but I found I quite often break my needles trying to felt around them to add the colour this time however I did it before to make sure they were secure. If I had not, I would of probably just cut into the wool pushed them in and stabbed around them to push the wool back down. Eye timing is just a personal preference i feel. This time I went for my Hobbycraft 8mm black eyes.
At this point it was now time to give this little guy some colour…
I used 3 different colours of wool, I forgot to photograph the yellow I used (sorry!). Started by totally covering the whole robin in brown. A circle of red was placed on lower belly and slightly underneath for the chest and I also added yellow which was mat felted flat and cut into a triangle for the beak, two circles of the same yellow wool were also felted on for the feet. Again I used my 3 needle pen for most of this, occasionally dropping down to one needle for around the eyes and attacking the beak.
I hope you all like my Robin it was great fun to make, now to make another as my mum has requested one for her tree too!