Snowy Owl Christmas Ornament - Free Sewing Pattern

Sew an adorable snowy owl Christmas ornament to decorate your tree! This cute little owl would be so cute on a woodland themed tree. You can make one for your own tree using my free sewing pattern and tutorial.

Buying Christmas ornaments is fun, but my favorite ornaments are the ones that are handmade. I love being able to put ornaments on the tree that were made either by my own hands or by people I love.

We’re having an ornament exchange at work this year. And while I’ve got a couple of funny ornaments to donate to the exchange, I also wanted to make something super cute – something that people would steal and connive to get to take home.

This snowy owl is the design I came up with, and I have a feeling he’s going to be popular at the ornament exchange. I mean, look at those big snowy owl eyes and that soft snowy owl fur! And how adorable is that little bit of fur sticking up on the top of his head?

And though this looks like a complicated sewing project, it’s actually fairly simple. You just need to be comfortable sewing on faux fur. The back of the ornament is polar fleece which helps minimize the slippage that often happens when you’re sewing faux fur.

If you have scraps of faux fur and fleece in your stash, this is a great project to use them up.

The faux fur is a scrap from these tabletop Christmas trees I made a couple of years ago. And the linen I used for the wing and face is left over from the tutorial I wrote for the pumpkin pie tea towel.

Supplies

Owl body front – faux fur scrap

Owl body back – fleece scrap

Wing and face – quilting cotton or linen scrap

Beak – quilting cotton, felt or faux leather scrap

Eyes – 1 pair ½” brown safety eyes

Polyfil stuffing

Fabric glue

Crochet cord

Free Pattern – Snowy Owl Christmas Ornament

RST = Right Sides Together

Prep

This project uses fusible webbing to fuse cotton or linen on to faux fur. It’s a good idea to test this first with scraps to be sure your faux fur won’t melt with the heat of an iron. Use a pressing cloth to help minimize the chance of the faux fur melting. If your faux fur melts when ironed, you can use fabric glue instead of fusible webbing.

Trace all of the applique pattern shapes on to the back of your fusible webbing. The shapes are already reversed for you.

If you’re using felt or vinyl for the Beak, you don’t need to back it with fusible webbing. This piece actually gets glued down rather than sewn down. If you’re using a quilting cotton, go ahead and back it with fusible webbing as that will help control fraying.

Follow manufacturer’s instructions to fuse each shape to the back of the fabrics. Cut out each shape.

Sew the Owl Body Front

Follow manufacturer’s instructions to fuse the Wing and Face pieces down to the Owl Body Front, using the dotted lines on the pattern piece as a placement guide.

If your faux fur melts with an iron, you can use fabric glue instead of the fusible webbing but you’ll need to let the glue dry before moving on to the next step.

Top stitch around Wing and Face pieces close to the edges to secure.

Follow manufacturer’s instructions to install the safety eyes at the dots marked on the pattern.

Assemble the Snowy Owl Ornament

Place the Owl Body Front and Owl Body Back pieces RST. Sew around all sides with ¼” seam allowance, leaving 2” open at the bottom to turn.

Clip curves, turn right side out.

It can be difficult to turn the tail with it’s pointy end. I used a mechanical pencil without any lead in it to gingerly poke the point at the end of the tail. Be very careful when you do this because it’s easy to poke a hole all the way through when you’ve trimmed your seam allowances close.

Stuff with Poly-fil, then hand sew the turning hole close using a ladder stitch.

Use fabric glue to glue the Beak on to the face where indicated on the pattern.