Owl Softie free Pattern/Tutorial

As you may have heard the City of Christchurch in New Zealand has been devestated by an earthquake which caused such sadness and loss of life. So when I found the blog post from 'Kiwi at Heart' collecting Softies for the kids of Christchurch I just had to be involved.

I have been wanting to make an Owl Tutorial for ages so this seemed like the perfect reason to get in and do one, my hope is that you might make one or two for the kids.

So here we go, this is my Owl, I've tried desperately to come up with a cute name, but alas I can't think of one... any ideas?

Anyway if you'd like to make one you will need:

Fat Quarter of Main body fabric (you will probably get at least 2 owls from a Fat Quarter)
scraps of fabric for the wings and eyes
Wool felt for his beak.
Vliesofix
Stuffing
General Sewing Supplies.
Pattern pieces Download the PDF here

Directions:
Trace the Owls wings, Eyes, Pupils and beak onto the Vliesofix and iron onto your chosen fabrics.

Trace the Owls Body onto folded fabric and cut out on the traced line so you have 2 pieces. This is what you will have, plus an extra back piece.

Overlapping the eyes slightly, iron all the pieces onto the front of your owl. The wings should line up with the outside edge of the green fabric, but the eyes should be in at least 3/8" so they don't get caught in the seam.

 Take this to your machine (or you could do this by hand) blanket stitch around all the raw edges of the appliques.

Once you have finished your applique you can either just place the back piece on top of your finished front and stitch around the whole thing leaving a gap for turning through between the wings at the bottom, or you can add the centre gussett, I'll explain this at the end of the tut. Reduce your stitch length to 1.0 and make sure you use polyester thread. Cotton will just break as soon as you stuff your owl.

You need to snip into all the sharp points so the owl will turn through nicely, take the top off the ears like in the picture, this will give you nice sharp points. Make sure to get close, but not too close when snipping, you don't want to cut through your stitching.

This is an owl without the centre gusset using minky on the back.

 If you want to add a gussett to make your Owl like the Blue one at the top of this Tutorial, cut out the 2" x 22" strip and carefully stitch it all the way around your softie being careful not to pull it too tight. Start at the bottom of your owl and leave at least 1" tail. You can pin it all the way first if you like, but its not necessary on the first side. When you get close to the where you started stop and stitch your tails together, like you would join the tails of binding on a quilt. Finish stitching the seam.
Repeat this step and join the back of your owl, but this time pin the piece into place. Leave a 2" hole for stuffing and stuff and ladder stitch the opening closed.

I hope you understand all this and I will try and get pictures of the gusset making stage, but unfortunately my camera battery died and I wanted to get this up as quickly as possible,

Hugs Paula