Whimsical Bird Wings

Here are some bird wings I made for my daughter to wear to a fancy dress birthday party for one of her little friend’s second birthday.

I used a tutorial found on Prudent Baby via my favourite hangout Pinterest.  I’ve found quite a few tutorials on Prudent Baby and would recommend checking out their website for all sorts of lovely DIYs.  The tutorial is provided by Eri who also has a beautiful blog at Llevo en Invierno in both Spanish and English.

Yet again, I’ve used scraps leftover from the patchwork quilt I made for my daughter’s bed.  I used some drill cotton for the back (which was also left over from the bucket hat) for the backing and used the various florals and patterns from the quilt to make some the scallops for whimsical looking feathers.  A couple of things I did differently to the tutorial:-

• I included the scallops on the backing material as one piece.  Eri added this in later, but I thought it would look nice in all one piece.
• To neaten the edges, I used some bright fuschia satin ribbon to use as binding up the side and top of the wings.  Although the scallops are all raw edges (unhemmed), I wanted to bind the sides to keep it all together.  I’m really pleased with this and think it adds a pop of colour to what would otherwise be quite softly coloured.
• I also didn’t really fancy having ties to go around my daughters neck  (which I’m sure she wouldn’t like either).  I therefore added ties at the back of each wing to keep them together, and ties to go at the top of her arms and on her wrists to keep it attached to her (although in hindsight, this didn’t work very well when putting it on for the party and I had to use safety pins to hold it onto the back of the top (which in turn dragged her back down) and also around the top of her arms).   Maybe when she’s a bit older she’ll be willing to wear the ties around her neck.  I’m amazed she didn’t try to pull it off her wrists and upper arms which is what she did when trying it on at home – however, this may be due to the fact that she is so dang shy she didn’t dare make a scene in front of all the other kids at the party and just stood there as I tied the pieces to her arms.

It’s great when you can make something out of fabric you already have at home.  All I had to buy was the ribbon and matching thread which cost less than £2 from a stall in the Eagle Centre Markets.