My husband and I survived the September 2013 flooding in Colorado without any property damage, but suffered a water line break last night (Feb 8) in our storage unit as we went from freezing temperatures for two days to a relatively warm 40 degrees. Some of our boxes were wet and we brought them home to unpack and dry out. One of these boxes was labeled “Chickens” and lo I rediscovered this “Clucky Chicken” I made a few years ago.

Clucky Chicken is a pattern from Melly & Me. Melly & Me are Rosalie Quinlan and Melanie Hurston who live in Australia. They’ve designed a lot of really cute stuffie patterns that you can buy here. You can also buy their patterns from other sources in the US. Here is the photo from their product.

How could I not make this adorable chicken with 4 chicks in her wings, sitting in the grass! I had to do it.

But I had forgotten how difficult sewing small things by machine can be. For this particular pattern almost everything is small – combs, tails, wings, and chick bodies are all small. Only the chicken body itself and her wings were really big enough to sew easily on a machine. For all of the other pieces, I ended up digitizing the stitch lines for machine embroidery. That way I was able to stitch out all 4 chicks at once, all 8 chick wings at once, etc. After they were stitched out, I trimmed the individual pieces, inverted them, stuffed them (as needed), and hand finished the closures.

Stitching the small pieces with an embroidery machine saved me some time, but inverting the pieces was also very difficult and I probably ended up poking some holes in the fabric in my desperate attempts to poke and prod the fabric through the openings. I *know* there must be an easier way! There is a tutorial on Melly & Me’s blog here that I have not yet tried, but looks helpful. (Search for “Turning small parts”.) It involves the use of a straw and a stick and looks promising.

In the end, I love this Clucky Chicken but would hesitate to make it again until I felt I had more time and patience. I would definitely try the straw and stick suggestion for turning small pieces next time. And I might consider making the chicken a little bigger to make the whole process a little easier.