So, you may have noticed on Instagram that a little while ago I made a crow, from a pattern by the wonderful Ann Wood. There he is, pictured above.

He was made as a present for my sis in Australia and he made it all the way there in the mail, safe and sound – eventually! She christened him Cawdor, which I think is a brilliant name (and typical of the way my sister’s lovely brain works).

I’d wanted to make a crow (or raven, or magpie, or corvid of some kind) for a long time, but my pattern-drawing skills let me down. I just couldn’t work out the gusseting and the top part of the legs. So I decided that instead of trying unsuccessfully to reinvent the wheel I would just buy Ann’s pattern, since she had already done all the hard work on that front.

I have to say, whilst the pattern is excellent and the resulting crow very impressive, he was not quite so easy to make as I had anticipated. There are a few tricks to getting Mr Crow just so – and not all of these were entirely explicit in the pattern instructions.

So Cawdor met with a few hitches along the way. Which I’ve decided to share, because surely I can’t be the only one…? Or maybe I am the only one – and I just need to come clean about how rubbish I am, so that other people can enjoy feeling smug and superior!When I began, I thought that I’d just use fabrics I already had. But after a root through my stash it turned out that I didn’t have very many black or dark fabrics at all, so I started hunting and gathering. A shiny black tablecloth from the charity shop (obviously aimed at gothic dinner parties – I’m imagining black candles and skull goblets) was purchased for a very reasonable cost. And I was ridiculously happy to see that my neighbours had kindly disposed of a black cushion, left on top of their bin outside, which I immediately snaffled (and washed) with crow-making in mind.The cushion cover fabric is thick and has a faint impression of snakeskin about it, suggesting a feathery texture, so I thought it would work very well for the main body. However, I hadn’t quite realised that there was a bit of stretch to it. Ann’s instructions were to stuff the body firmly, but unfortunately this stretchiness meant that when I had finished stuffing, I had a rather chubbier crow than I had intended. Back to the drawing board. Or rather the ironing board – to iron some non-stretch interfacing onto the fabric, prior to re-stuffing.

A similar issue occurred when making the wings and tail. I had some black cotton fabrics that I wanted to use, but this time they turned out to be too flimsy to hold their shape once additional feathers were added. So again, I ironed on some stiff interfacing to make them more robust. And spent quite a while studying the photos trying to work out which way up the wings went on.And then there were the legs…

Ann lives in the USA, where craft materials seem to be cheap, plentiful and widely available. How I envy her this! I live in the UK, where craft materials, particularly in these post-Brexit times, are often expensive, difficult to find and limited in variety.

So I could not find any wire of the correct gauge, let alone the specific paper-covered stuff that Ann uses, for making crow’s legs and feet. I had to improvise. Luckily I had some rather thick-yet-soft, copper-coloured aluminium wire left over from making doll stands yonks ago, which I pressed into service along with some masking tape. It took a bit of trial and error, but eventually I got legs and feet done to a satisfactory standard.

And then I did a few things to make the crow my own – mainly changing the eyes, which I wanted to be beady and shiny and lidded, rather than Ann’s embroidered ones. And I sewed on some sequins, because surely if you have had black sequins in your stash for years they have just been waiting for a big shiny crow to come along to have their moment on.

So pleased with my crow-making was I that I immediately set about making another one. I had fantasies of making all kinds of crows in different fabrics, maybe different sizes, maybe even making a magpie from the same pattern. After all, I had now ironed out all the difficulties and crow no.2 would be a doddle!

And then I came back down to earth with a bang. Because crow no.2 has been not a doddle, but even more of a bugger than Crow no.1 proved to be.

To be fair, most of the making went smoothly, once I had sourced an old, plus-sized black linen skirt to use for the main fabric and remembered to add interfacing and not to over-stuff him. But then I got to the legs and it all went – excuse the expression but it is entirely accurate – tits up. Literally.

Having run out of the leftover thick wire I used for legs last time, I went on a hunt for a suitable substitute. I have about 5 different types of wire in my stash, so I picked the one I thought most suitable and reasoned that I could beef it up with some paperclay if it wasn’t quite thick enough.

Turns out that was a bad idea. My first pair of legs wobbled and bent and cracked and after faffing and faffing and FAFFING with them to try and fix them I ended up throwing them across the room in a tantrum and then picking them up and throwing them in the bin.

I trawled craft shops, both online and in town, for something more suitable. Eventually I came home with some slightly-flimsier-than-I-would-like paper-covered wire. “I’ll just double it up and it’ll be fine!” I reasoned. I got all the way through the process of leg-making a second time before I realised that it wasn’t fine. Crow no.2 refused to stand up for himself.

So I sent off for some proper floral tape, like the stuff Ann uses (rather than the make-do masking tape I had been using thus far). I wrapped new legs in said tape. They looked perfect. I finished all the other work on Crow no.2 and installed the legs. He keeled over. I rebalanced him. Added weights. Took some of them out again. And he keeled over again. And again and again and again. I reinforced his legs with more wire and more tape. I will stress here that none of this is the fault of the pattern – it is all down to my inability to source the correct materials (and just possibly my somewhat gung-ho attitude when it comes to following instructions).

I reinstalled the reinforced, extra-faffed-with legs. And…Well. He does stand up now, but he is still only about as strong and stable as an Ikea table. Which isn’t quite as well-balanced as I would like, though he does have his sturdy tail to help him out, so he doesn’t actually keel over any more.

But I’m completely faffed out when it comes to bird’s legs, so we are where we are.

By the way, please don’t let any of the above put you off buying Ann’s excellent pattern. She has extra sew-along instructions on her blog to help with sewing the crow, which I found invaluable. And I know that I will certainly be tempted to make another corvid before long.

But let’s just say that until I find some more suitable wire, it might be a little while until my imagined murder of crows comes into being.♥

Post Script:
I stood him up and went out for the evening. Came back and he was on the floor. So I guess he will be staying with me, rather than flying off to live with someone else, where he would no doubt end up nosediving off whatever perch he was allocated, to the dismay of all concerned – especially me.