Quilted Bird House with Toy Bird Rattles

When a beautiful little baby girl Lily was born a few months ago and her mom (my cousin) decorated her room all in birds I decided to make this quilted bird house with some bird rattle toys to go along with it as a baby gift.

I used scrap fabric and a few pieces of felt (an a lot of thread!) to sew the pieces. This is a combination of machine sewing, hand sewing and embroidery. I worked on it each night for about 2 ½ hours and it took me about 7 days.

You will need the following items to construct the birdhouse:

- Scrap pieces of patterned cotton fabric – if you are buying the fabric you will want no more than ¼ yard of each pattern.
- 4 or 5 sheets of felt
- 4 bundles of thread
- Scrap batting – if you are purchasing the batting you will need very little – about 1/3 yard to be safe.
- Sharp scissors
- Sewing needles
- Sewing machine – it could be done all by hand but would take longer to do.
- An embroidery book if you don’t know the stitches by heart.
- A pattern of pieces - My pattern is shown above. If you are following this pattern you will use the square pattern (6 x 6 inches) 3 times for 2 sides and 1 bottom piece and the pointed pattern (6 x 6 inch with a 2 inch high triangle on top) 2 times for the front and back pieces. You will see the roof pattern in step 10. It is 7 inches wide by 11 inches long.
- 4 bells – if you want the birds to be rattles when completed.

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Step 1: Iron and Cut Fabric

Before you start cutting any fabric it’s a good idea to iron your pieces. You can do it after if you want but it does make cutting your fabric a little easier.

Turn one piece of fabric over to the backside. Using your pattern draw the squares that you will need to cut from the fabric. Cut out the squares. Repeat with remaining patterns.

Once all of your squares are cut arrange them how you want your panels to look. You will need two panels of nine squares each, and one panel of eight squares – leaving out the bottom middle square to account for the doorway of the bird house.

The back panel is solid so it won't need to be sewn.

**I show six patterns but only used five of them. Sometimes after arranging them you need to omit one or two.