A little quilled bird

I have always found making quilled birds a bit of a challenge. Here in the UK, postage costs are worked out according to the size and thickness of an item, which means that unless I restrict myself to 3mm quilling strips in a single layer when making a card, people have to pay extra postage when mailing it (not a good selling point!)

Most of the designs I have seen for quilled birds are based on a side view where you have to stick a wing-shaped teardrop coil on top of a quilled body (making a 6mm depth of quilling in total - too thick for basic postage!) And it just doesn't look right when you try and eliminate the wing by designing a bird face-on.

I think I've found the answer! I created this basic side-on bird shape by pinching two rings of paper into teardrops and gluing them together using a quilling board and pins. (I made the rings by winding 3mm strips around two dowels that I have - one large and one small.)

The smaller teardrop manages to suggest both a wing and the tail of the bird in a single shape. I've added a tiny triangular beak and a little eye to the edge of the larger teardrop, and it looks just as though the bird is facing forward with its head turned. Using this basic shape, you can add a crest, tail plumes and little perching feet to create an infinite number of fantasy bird designs. For the bird at the top of this post, I used my new crimping tool to crimp the strips that I used for the two rings - I think this gives an added impression of feathers.


And just to prove that none of my experimental quillings ever goes to waste, I've added this to my stock of quilled cards for this week's market: