Barn owl

I would like to present my latest needle felted creation, a barn owl. I have not been naming any of my pieces lately and probably will not name him either.

Ever since I read “Wesley the owl: the remarkable love story of an owl and his girl” by Stacey O’Brien, I decided I wanted to needle felt a barn owl. The story has a sad ending but it is a good read.

This guy is 10.5” from talons to the top of his head and 12” from wing tips to his head. I had lots of things to figure out along the way. First I started out with needle felting the beak and talons. They turned out being too large and not pointed enough to look like a beak or talons. I ended up searching the web and bought some ‘Premo!’ Sculpey clay for the beak and talons. I never worked with any of the oven bake clays before. After about 10 minutes with warming it up in my hands it was quite easy forming the parts, not that making something sharp on one end with a bit of a curve is rocket science. I made lots of extras just in case if nothing else I had a good selection to get all the talons to pretty much the same size.

From there I made a wire armature for the feet and used Krazy craft glue to stick the talons on to the armature. From there I felted the feet.

The beak is a bit different. I formed it the same as the talons it is just a bit larger and not quite as long. I also poked two holes across the base of the beak and threaded Mastex upholstery thread through the holes and tied the beak off at the back of his head.

There are five wing pieces; one tail feather and two separate wings on each side. The wings are loosely felted with no wire armature; I may add some wire in the wings next time because they are just kind of limp.

Right now he’s not up for adoption, there is a fiber arts show coming up in May of 2011 and I plan to enter him into the competition, unless I make something better before then.

Don’t ask me how many hours it took to make him. I’ll just say I missed a lot of Survivor, Biggest Loser and any number of other reality shows.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark