With a little extra time last weekend, I decided to make a video about how to make one of my felt bird designs. How hard could it be? I’ve been making the birds for years.
Despite having a daughter who is a cinema major, I wanted to do this myself. I borrowed Hannah’s lighting equipment and spent half a day turning my felt work desk into a stage. I figured out how to finagle my iPhone off of a selfie stick and tripod to film my work. I sewed one side of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak in advance to figure out what parts of the process I wanted to share.
Video Take-one – The Learning Curve
Coffee in hand, I closed myself in my office and proceeded to film as I sewed the second side of the bird, made the legs (and two other leg variations), and then sewed the two bodies together.
I spent hours editing all of the clips, only to decide in the end that the lighting and shadows were so bad that I needed to film it all again. So, I pulled the blanket stitching out, separated the two bodies, and cut felt for another side of the bird to make on camera.
Video Take-two – Unexpected Challenges
This round went much better. Why wouldn’t it? I had a dry run, after all. Two hours later, I pulled all of the clips into iMovie again and started to edit. The lighting was better, but not great; I could live with it. I was almost all of the way through editing before I realized there was a problem. During the filming, the iPhone, facing down toward the desktop on the selfie stick, had started to list. By the end of the “shoot” for this bird, my hands were barely in the video. Frustrated, I tried cropping the video, but gave up and resolved to create the bird a third time in the morning.
Update: Hannah reminded me about the partial retake where I filmed the ceiling!
Video Take-three – Third Time’s A Charm!
Sunday morning, the house was alive with noise. After threatening everyone to silence for the next two hours, I finished my third Rose-breasted Grosbeak felt ornament on camera.
While editing the third video, I felt like I said things better the first or second time, so I pulled audio from one video to overlay in the final video. Hannah watched the whole process with amusement as I whittled a two-hour video down to 28 minutes.
I’ve got a bit to learn about making videos like this. I’m not going to set YouTube on fire, and I might just put you to sleep (after viewing, Hannah thinks I could do voice meditation soundtracks), but maybe you’ll find something useful!
Thank you so much for the great “informative” video!
Happy Easter to you, Hannah and family!
Love following you!
Your video turned out lovely. Thank you! I was always intimidated to try your patterns. Your video makes it look very doable.
Thank you!
I enjoyed your tutorial so much.
Glad to hear it!
Thank you for the super video. I am looking forward to watching more of them
Excellent video tutorial. Good quality audio, too.
Great video! If you hadn’t spilled the beans, no one would ever guess how hard you worked to make it look that easy. 😉 Thank you.
Ha! You’re welcome.
You are so kind to share your patterns. Apart from enjoying the process of using my sewing materials, I’m loving learning to identify the birds. Thank you so much.
Really nice tutorial, calm and reassuring that it’s not too difficult! Thank you!
Thanks! I’m glad it didn’t put you to sleep. 🙂
Truly enjoyed your video, method/tips. I love working with felt, caught the bug because our mom made felt stockings for us when we were little, and i bought kits for making our nieces/nephews and godchildrens, but i’m now truly enjoying these as much or more. Looking forward to making many many more.