Last year I worked on a community project for a fair trade shop and ran workshops where adults and children made these robins using the fairtrade shape for the body and wings. We used Shetland and Blue Faced Leicester Wool to use as local wool as possible.
The day after I finished the project I did a craft fair at my son's school. I had meant to decorate the robins myself to sell on my stall but just didn't have the time so I packaged them up as a sewing kit for people to do themselves and they sold out! It seemed like they were more popular unfinished so I've decided to make some more to go in my Etsy shop but thought I would experiment with some hand woven material my Uncle has made and has kindly given me.
First I carded some wool for the back of the robins (I didn't need to use hand carded wool but I thought it was a good way to use up bits of wool I had).
I laid this down on some thin plastic and my bamboo mat.
Then I placed brown shetland wool prefelts for the body of the robins on top, as well as cutting out various pieces of my Uncle's material as well. I used a mixture of material and prefelt for the wings and used handmade and manufactured prefelt for the robin's red breast.
I added some wool yarns to some of the robins to see how that would look too.
Here they are after felting.
And here they are cut out.
And some close ups.
And another.
Most of the material felted in well apart from the yellowish wing which was quite thick. Some of the woven material creased so perhaps I should have pulled the creases out more as I felted it but I was worried about pulling the fabric away from the wool.
Perhaps you noticed my stocking sneaking in the photo shoot - made a while ago after seeing something similar on 'Kirsty's Handmade Christmas'. So here it is on it's own!
Think I should have another go at making these - I've got some lovely Christmassy ribbon that would work well. 
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