Book giveaway: The Artful Bird

I haven’t done a giveaway in a while, but recent wintry temperatures and a desire to see spring soon reminds me of birds, so that’s what the giveaway will be about this time: Abigail Patner Glassenberg’s The Artful Bird: Feathered Friends to Make and Sew.

Abigail writes about the basic construction techniques for making your own 3-D bird sculptures from nothing more than cotton fabrics, wool stuffing, interfacing, fusible web, batting, floral tape and wire. She breaks down the components of creating a bird into the body parts, head, wings and tail, beaks and eyes. When you have learned the basics of assembly, you can produce your own designs. You can also re-create one of Abigail’s designs; she includes 40 of her projects in the book.

All of Abigail’s birds are designed to stand up on their own. One of my favorites is the lark below.

The woodpecker shown below reminds me of the little guy that wakes me most mornings as he bores into one of the tree trunks in the woods behind my house.

Part of the fun of designing your own birds is decorating the wings. You can overlay lace, smock fabric, embellish with ribbon, cut up book pages, glue down seed beads, use free-motion embroidery, glue down rhinestones, use acrylic paints, or even sew on fabric yo-yos. The wings are a mixed media artist’s canvas, so use your imagination—your bird doesn’t have to be realistic!

To enter the giveaway, all you have to do is tell me what your favorite bird is in the comments below. A week from now (or later, if the minimum number of 5 entries is not reached), I will select a recipient randomly using True Random Number Generator. Good luck!

© 2014 Judy Nolan. All rights reserved.