Weekends are for craft, and by the time I get to them I’m so tired all I want to do is something easy and small. So I printed some patterns and sketched out instructions from videos for a few small projects I wanted to try.

One was the Little Birdy Pincushion by Sharon Holland Designs. Once I’d printed it out and cut out the shapes, I went looking through my bundles of scrap fabric for combinations I liked. The body and tail of the first one is an old handmade hankie of Mum’s, the second uses dress fabric scraps she gave me.

I didn’t add the dried lentils, but they sit well enough if you give them a firm tap. They’re stuffed with chopped up scraps of fabric and batting. The eyes are french knots, but I think I might switch to a bead as it might be more easily seen.

The first one took me more than two hours. I started off hand sewing then realised that the seams would gape once it was stuffed, so I switched to machine sewing. The second one took a little bit over an hour.

I kinda want to make a flock of them, and maybe line them up along a shelf or branch.