Chicken with dangling legs - tutorial

Chicken of this kind are very pleasant in keeping. They are easy company, totally clean and friendly with children. They are staying at their place except they are following the children in their games.

Whereas the birth of those chicken is a little tricky and I hope this tutorial is clear. Try it out!

Material:

• 2 squares 15x15cm for the body         
• 1 square 10x10cm for the tail
• 1 square 6x6cm for the spout
• 2 quadrants with 7cm radius for the head (optional)
• Zig-zag-ribbon as ruff (optional)
• 2 black buttons for the eyes
• Felt for crown and jowl
• 2 about 20cm long ribbons fort he legs
• 2 perls for the feets (optional)
• Batting (not on the foto)

Preparation head (optional):

You can make those chicken also without extra marked head zone, but I like them better with.

Therefor you iron the quadrants with Flisofix on one corner of each body square and cover the edge with the zig-zag-litz.

If you want it more easy you can cut out the quadrants with a zig-zag scissor that gives a likewise effect.

Preparation tail, spout, crown and jowl

From felt you cut out a crown and a jowl. Remember that about 0,7cm of it will be later in the seam allowance and cut accordingly bigger.

For the tail fold the 10x10 square in half and then both closed corners to the opposite middle. Best if you iron the folds.

For the spout you are doing the same as for the tail and in the end you fold it in half. The long (open) side of the triangle is the downside.

Head:

On the seam allowance of the head, fix the prepared pieces spout, crown and jowl. The jowl should only slightly go over the ruff and stick a bit into the downside of the spout. If you put the jowl only under the spout, there will be a big distance between the two visible afterwards because of the seam allowance and that’s not so pretty.

Now you put the two body squares over each other - right sides facing each other and the head zones are together.

Sewing the body:

Close the following seams:

1. The back seam of the chicken, that means the seam where is also the crown.

2. The front of the chicken, that means the seam where is the spout and jowl.

3. The belly of the chicken, that means the seam that is opposite of the back. Leave    in the back half a turning opening of 3-4cm.

Have a look if spout and crown are correctly fixed. It happens easily to close in the crown into the front seam.

I propose to actually close first the back seam and do this from the top of the head to the back. The two other seams can be closed together also starting at the point of the head. 

I used a red thread so the seams are better visible on the foto.

Chest and legs:

Now you place the front seam over the belly seam and fix it with a needle. Rectangular to those seams you mark a line that is about 6cm long that means 3cm on each side of the seams.

Put the leg ribbons from the inside with one end into the marked line so that they are about rectangular to that line. Fix them with needles.

Sew along the marked line.

Verify if the ribbons are correctly placed and fixed with the seam.

Later it should look like this:

Tail:

To not catch the leg ribbons with the seam of the tail, I propose to pull them out of the turning opening.

Place the back seam over the belly seam to get the pyramid form.

Add the tail by fixing it centric and between the two layers.

Close the tail seam. 

Later it should look like this:

Finish:

Turn the chicken, stuff it, close the turning opening and sew on the eyes!

Fix the pearls to the end of the legs and your chicken is ready!

The most fun you will have with a whole chicken run: