Birds and Tassels

I have been home today with a sick child. The bad part (besides the fact that my sweet girl is sick) is that I was supposed to meet my pals for lunch and some Thrift store hopping. We haven't been able to get together since Christams because of one thing or another , today being no exception. On a much more positive note, I am able to be at home when my kids are sick, which is not often AND, I was home all day so I could get some more projects finished!! Yah!!! Love it when that happens!!

On my Surface Design Roup and on a group that I moderate we are creating Bird Tota's. Bird Tota's are strings of stuffed birds that one often sees in import stores. They are like soft sculpture Totem poles, if you will. We are each making stuffed birds for the other players and in the end we will each have our own string of birds. These strings of Birds or other animals usually have a bell or bells hanging from the bottom.

I made these girls using some of my hand dyed fabric and then I created their wings from scraps fused to a green batik fabric. After stitching all over the piece with gold rayon thread I cut out a parallelogram shape and folded fans from each piece. As you can see each bird has a loop on it's back and one on it's belly, for hanging.

This bird is for a friend who is very partial to green. I finished off this One Bird Tota with a hand made tassel. Once I created this tassel, ( In about three minutes, start to finish!) I went on to make several more!

It is difficult to see in the pictures, but I have added beads in amoung the fibers and in future ones I will probbably add charms and buttons and found objjects, depending on the project! A key would be cool tucked in there or a heart charm or a bird charm or whatever strikes your fancy!!