August: meet Coco & Coco Jr.

A mama bird and her baby? Yes please!

Basically that was the idea behind the August project. I wanted to sew lots of colorful mini birds to decorate my life. I'm on vacation and I feel like taking the time to spruce up my home.

There you go, now you're just as motivated as me 😉

Now a little more about the project itself. Coco sews a bit like Pépé, that is to say the pattern is traced on a square of fabric, we sew on the line and then cut out the shape. This allows for more precision and is super practical for an object as small as Coco Jr. and full of curves.

The more negative side of this technique is that you can't sew the details before assembly so you have to do everything by hand. The positive side is that by hand you can do a lot of things. Plus these birds are so small that it doesn't take much time to decorate them.

Fabric

Coco was developed to be sewn in a medium weight woven (liek a quilting cotton). Its wing is cut in felt, or any other material that frays little. But if your bird won't be washed too often you can choose the fabric of your dreams and not worry too much about the threads.

Embroidery

The eye, beak and tail are all done in super simple embroidery. With some embroidery floss, you can also add legs and a loop to hang it up. And oops, I wrote the instructions so quickly that I forgot to mention the legs. Just pass a whole piece of embroidery thread at the bottom of Coco and tie it. This is also an optional step.

Variations

Your imagination is the limit; buttons for the eyes, voile wings, a felt beak, wire legs...

You can also sew mini birds and do a decoration activity with children. A little white glue, brushes and lots of textile objects and let's go.

The futur of the tiny club

We are approaching the 1 year mark of the mini club. The idea came to me in September 2022 and I launched the project in October. I loved my year, pushed my creative limits and worked hard to stick to a fast schedule. I took my time to develop the ideal formula and I'm really proud to have accomplished all of this. I absolutely don't want to stop, but I'm starting to think about a lighter formula for 2024. The idea of the moment is a quarterly subscription, with unlimited access to the mini club pattern bank until today. Thoughts?

Happy sewing,

Dominique