Winter in Wisconsin is LONNNNGGGG and even though it is now March, it has not released its grip on us yet. This means that I need to start doing some spring projects to get out of my funk.

The song birds are starting to come back and I am hoping to spy my first robin soon so I thought I would create some hanging bird pods for them to nest in.

To create a bird pod, you need to use a resist. I created a tear shaped one. If you are not familiar with wet felting over a resist there are lots of great tutorials out there. I highly recommend Living Felt – these creative ladies take you through the process step by step.

I generally start with wool bats for my first 2 layers of wool and then augment with merino top or curly wool. In some of the houses I added shredded silk tie fibers (silk ties are a great thing to look for in thrift stores and are generally a lot easier to find than silk scarves) and some crazy cool scrap art yarn that I purchased from Peace and Thyme Farm.

I put a simple wool rope loop on all 4 but decided to mix it up a bit and added a really long rope to one. Will have to see how it looks in the tree. I have to be careful with where I hang these – my dogs think that felt is the greatest thing since sliced bread (and they LOVE sliced bread). I am not kidding – earlier this winter they managed to get a felt hat that I had made for myself off of a counter while I was out of the room and had it eaten in under 2 minutes. Managed to capture one of my offenders when I was taking pictures of the pods.

Knocked out 2 on a saturday and stuffed them with scrap materials to dry then knocked out the second 2 on sunday and was able to reuse the stuffing. Would love to see what others make with spring as their inspiration!