Felt cockatiel softie!

So a friend who's getting married contacted me a while ago to make some cockatiel felt sculptures to use on top of a birdcage at the wedding. What a cute idea!

The couple sent me a picture of their birds, who are "whiteface" cockatiels, an interesting mutation that doesn't have the bright orange cheeks and yellow face that are most common. I wanted to make my felt birds to match theirs as much as possible.

Surprisingly, I did not have a "craft fail" at my first try.  Perhaps this is because I have been around my birds so much--I know pretty well how they are shaped! While I've made some cockatiels out of felt before, they weren't totally 3-D so I thought this might be a challenge.

I totally love how he came out! He's got a puffy belly and the wings are a little bit movable, so you can hold them out a little bit to make a "cape" like Edy does when he's happy. The beak is a little bit adjustable too--couldn't decide if I wanted to sew it down closer to the face or not.

I really wanted to make the crest lifelike so I used two layers of felt to create the "feathers." His tail is still a little bendy despite three layers of felt tail-feathers.

Here's a view of him from the top/back.

And sitting on my couch, from a distance it looks like a real bird! Haha.

Here are some of the supplies I used to create my cockatiel soft sculpture...fiberfill, embroidery floss, and gray, black, and white felt. You can also see some of my templates, which should make the second softie go much faster--wing templates, crest templates, underside of the tail. The light gray felt tube on the right will be used for the head, and the dark gray tube for the body.

I did not add feet to this softie...once I hear back from the bride & groom we'll see if the feet are necessary. I thought it would be pretty complicated to add them, and might require purchasing some floral wire, which I tend to stab myself with a lot by accident.

More soon on cockatiel #2!