Ever wondered how to give your adorable crochet birds a real leg up on life? Today, we’re going beyond feathers and fluff to tackle a critical part of any crocheted aviary: the legs! I’m talking about crafting sturdy wire bird legs that will add both stability and personality to your handmade feathered friends.

On the 7th Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me… a crocheted swan that’s too fabulous for swimming! Okay, so she’s not technically one of the 7 swans-a-swimming (she’d ruin her yarn feathers), but this diva is the ultimate whimsical holiday showstopper. She’ll outshine your tinsel, charm your guests, and probably demand her own stocking.

With Christmas around the corner, I can practically hear the 12 days of Christmas rolling around in my head! Soon the sugar plums will be dancing around in there too :).

Whenever you do a craft for the first time, you sometimes have to flounder, learn from your mistakes and pivot to redeem the effort you put into the work. Such was the case with making these wire bird legs!  Hopefully this experience will show you that you don’t always have to toss things and start again. 

I’m also briefly reviewing the book Crocheted Birds by Vanessa Mooncie. I don’t know why I haven’t made any crochet birds (especially given our blog name!), but I’m now making up for lost time with this amazing book. With Christmas around the corner, I can practically hear the 12 days of Christmas rolling around in my head – especially the ‘seven swans a swimming’! Soon the sugar plums will be dancing around in there too :).

Total aside, if you’ve ever wondered about the history behind the ’12 Days of Christmas’ song, this article is an interesting read.

Watch the Video

The video will show you how to make the wire bird legs with suggestions on how to troubleshoot the issues I ran into. It will also show you how to straighten kinked wire!

Our Bird Obsession

One of our favourite things to do this summer was visit our local parks to see the goslings transform into geese. Watching their antics was SO much fun and a welcome reprieve from sitting at a computer and blogging!

Inspired by the abundance of birds at the parks, I started to crochet birds, starting with something small and simple. This bird is also from Crocheted Birds by Vanessa Mooncie. It’s actually the Blackbird pattern, but I crocheted it in white and embellished it with a red beret.

The pop of red looks great on the shelf of our Christmas sleigh decor.

So, with some crochet birds experience under my belt, I went big with this crochet swan! Isn’t she beautiful? Unlike amigurumi, which I love to design (like Gabriola Frog and this crochet corn pattern), Vanessa’s design are like sculpture! So elegant.

Crochet Birds Materials

Grab your wire, needle nose pliers, and a dash of courage, because these crochet birds are about to stand tall… or at least as tall as their little legs can take them!

• Needle nose pliers with cutter
• 12 gauge aluminum craft wire
• Yarn – butterfly mercerized cotton or 24/7 in white, black and yellow
• Crocheted Birds by Vanessa Mooncie
• Floral tape (I used green, but prefer black for bird legs)
• Glass head pins

Crocheted Birds Book Review

I ran into a few glitches – one of which was a typo in the book itself that had me totally confused (we’ll get to that later). But I was able to email Vanessa and she kindly responded to ALL my inquiries in a timely manner! I’m really not the best when it comes to checking and answering my emails, so I need to take a page out of Vanessa’s book and improve on that!

I won’t be showing you how to crochet the pattern, because you’ll have to buy Crocheted Birds for that. But when I was looking for a good tutorial on how to create the wire bird legs, I couldn’t find one that resonated. So I’m going to show you how I made the bird legs for the Swan!

But first, a few tips I learned while crocheting the swan. Skip to the next section if you don’t want these pointers.

I love working with real cotton, but for me it has to be mercerized! Regular cotton tends to spit when you crochet it, but the way the mercerized plies are twisted together means practically no splitting. And mercerized cotton is lustrous; it has a beautiful sheen so perfect for crocheted birds!

The only drawback with this particular mercerized cotton is that it comes in skeins, which means it has to be re-wound.

My best tip for that is to lay it out onto a stiff board. Clip one end as shown, so it doesn’t get tangled into the yarn as you re-wind it. You can then re-wind the skein by hand.

Or you can get yourself a yarn winder which goes super fast. I’ve had this one for almost 40 years!

Before you know it, you’ll have workable yarn to crochet from. I always store the outer label in the middle, so I’ll remember what it is if I don’t use it right away. I recently found some yarn without the label and wanted more; no luck with that! It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack!

If you want to avoid all this work, try 24/7 Yarn instead. It’s also mercerized but slightly thicker. So your bird will be slight larger, but you won’t have to rewind it!

crochet birds Techniques

When you crochet the swan pattern from Crocheted Birds, you’ll learn so many techniques.

Like how to take a typical round and split it into two parts.

It’s hard to picture until you get the beak on the face, but this simple division becomes the head and the neck.

To support the beak, I cut up some cardboard from a Kleenex box; a great way to repurpose something that would otherwise get recycled.

Vanessa doesn’t really mention in the book when to stuff, so it’s easy to forget! It’s best to stuff as you go – especially when narrowing down to the neck where it can be difficult to stuff if you get too far.

One thing I wasn’t used to, was crocheting the neck back and forth like rows, as opposed to continuing in the round. Until I got used to it, I had holes forming and had to frog the work a few times.

Another interesting technique was shaping with short rows.

You can see how that allows you to shape the front and then change direction to complete the body. The open gap under the tail is to insert the legs – which we’ll get to, I promise.

However, the wings did present a challenge because when I crocheted them separately, they didn’t turn out to be the same size. That can happen so easily if your tension changes just a bit when you crochet the second one.

So here’s another tip: crochet the wings at the same time. Your tension will be the same and you’ll get equal sizing. I swapped back and forth, between the two wings, row by row.

Now finally; onto how to making those wire bird legs!

Wire Bird Legs

Errors in Crocheted Birds

When it came time to make the bird legs, the instructions indicated to use 32 gauge wire. I looked high and low and couldn’t find it. That’s because it doesn’t exist; it’s a typo. The wire for the swan – and all the larger birds – should be 12 gauge.

While I was at it, I asked Vanessa if there were any other errors and this is the list she gave me that she’s aware of (in case you buy the book and try some of the projects):

• Use 12 gauge wire for all the larger birds.
• Page 121 of the barn owl, at the end of row 33 of shape back should be “sl st in first dc, turn.” The slip stitch symbol (a dot) is also missing from the stitch chart.
• On page 118 of the barn owl pattern, at the end of row 1 of the breast should be “sl st in next st, turn.”
• The wings of the eagle, page 138, should be in yarn B.

I’m not going to lie. I actually was intimidated to make the legs and didn’t get it perfect. As this was my first attempt, I went awry. But I’ll show where I think I went wrong and you how to recover too if you run into the same problem.

I started with this 3-pack of aluminum wire by bead landing. I’m using the largest diameter (12 gauge).

Making the Bird Legs

For this crochet swan, I cut the 12 gauge wire to 45 3/4″. Wire always has kinks in it and I like to start with it as straight as possible. So watch the video to see how I straighten it!

I drew markings on a piece of cardboard (the inside of an upcycled kleenex box) for the toes (1.5″) and 6 3/4″ to make a bend in the wire at each end. I used needle nosed pliers to help bend the wire into shape.

To make the toes, you bend the wire back on itself every 1.5″. Squeeze the toes tight.

Then, wrap the length of wire that’s left at each end (6.5″) around the wire from the ankles to the top so you have double thickness.

I went wrong somewhere because the double thickness should have extended to the middle at the top and I fell short (meaning I had too much wire in the middle).

This is what the legs SHOULD look like.

To make it work, I think you should make the first bend at 8 1/4″ – or simply make another bend so the toes fall on the inside where you see the #3 below. Then wrap the extra length around the ankle and back up toward the top.

Of course, I hate to waste anything, so I didn’t do either of these things to test the theory. Instead, I made a pivot.  Watch the video and you’ll see what I actually did to double up the wire to give it the strength it needs for such a large crochet bird – or continue reading!

Here’s How to Fix It

After wrapping the wire in florist tape, I decided to bend the single wire in the middle (you’ll see that further ahead). Here are the steps I took.

Curve the wire as you see below (which will fit into the body) and make sure the feet are pointed in the same direction.

At this point, I wrapped the wire with florist tape (which isn’t in the book).

The florist tape sticks to itself. It also helps the yarn stick in the next step. TIP: if you don’t find the florist tape sticky, try stretching it as you wrap to activate the stickiness.

Now, here’s my fix: I bent the wire at the top to double up the thickness as you see below.

Again, squeeze the wire together tightly, Now, wrap again with floral tape.

Consequently, that doubled up the wire to strengthen it!

If I had bent the wire correctly, I think the legs might be taller. However, I planned to not bury the wire as deep into the bird as I would’ve.

Web Feet

Now it’s time to sew the webbing onto the wire foot. Just whip stitch around each toe.

I hid the underside of the yarn in between the webbing so it wouldn’t show underneath. It would probably be easier to sew this with a bent needle, so try that if you have one that’s blunt (you don’t want to tear the fibres of the yarn as you sew).

Continue wrapping yarn to cover all the floral tape. Once you reach the legs, you no longer need the needle. Just wrap until all the wire is covered in yarn.

Now, you can finish sewing on the beak, wings and tail. Then insert the wire bird legs, stuff firmly around the wire and make sure it will stand, before sewing up the seams along the top of the legs and body of the bird.

Here’s how the crochet swan looks from the side…

and the front.

Add a few eggs to finish it off. A real swan would have way more eggs than this of course!

Seven Swans a Swimming

It’s a little unconventional, but this beautiful swan will definitely fit in with our quirky Christmas theme this year. While I’m not going to crochet 6 more to complete my ‘seven swans a swimming’, it wouldn’t hurt to practice the wire legs again. But that will have to wait for my next crocheted bird!

If you have a crocheter on your Christmas list, I highly recommend Crocheted Birds by Vanessa Mooncie. The book is full of beautiful bird patterns like this barn owl and bald eagle.

There’s also a Robin, Blue Tit, Wren, Budgerigar, Dove and Cardinal. I can’t wait to try them all!

Pin Crochet Birds

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