The bluebird of happiness is hand-made.  And because those who rejoice in doing hand-work have a lot of cross-over skills, it's possible to get from here

to here

and have a lot of enjoyment doing it!  You'll notice I saved the bluebirds for last...  Here they are in their "raw" state, pieces of felt cut out in a bird shape...

To this, you add every embroidery stitch you'd like to play with.  Feather stitch is good, of course.  So are running stitches, lazy-daisy, chains, appliquing other shapes as I did in the earlier ornaments.  You'll see in the bird in the lower right photo

that I'm also partial to the bullion embroidery stitch used in Brazilian embroidery and crazy quilting to create dimensional roses.  Sequins, if you've got any, are easy to sew on with beads, though I've found you need the larger (size 6 ) beads if you want to sew through them.  Other potential "additives" are bits of lace (think tatting throwaways), rick-rack, more beads, buttons, commercial trims.  Finally, you'll put two pieces of the same shape felt together, sew them with a running stitch or a chain stitch or even cross stitches, stuff with a little bit of stuffing before you're done.  Early on in the sewing together part, you'll need about a 12" length of thin ribbon,  Fold it in half and knot it, then sew through that knot when you're sewing together the top part of an ornament.

And then you're done.  You can see two done with running stitches (one was through the chain, with a contrasting thread) and one chain stitched. 

For next week, I'll show you easy socks to wear indoors - find some good chunky yarn - not super-bulky, but something that will have a nice consistency on size 8 double-pointed needles.  Get some of those, too...

teaser...