Boy Week: Turkey Craft

Hi. I’m Tauni from It’s a Tradition. I am so excited to be guest posting on A Little Tipsy today.

Like Michelle, I am surrounded by boys. I am always looking for fun things to create with them…Some of them, like the Halloween cookie house we created, fall flat. Others, like this fun turkey hat, are such a hit they become a tradition…

I think the kids table is more fun than ever with this playful turkey hat, with brightly colored feathers and the ever popular googly eyes!

This is a simple project that takes about an hour at most. Not only that, but most of the items can probably be found around the house…

Start with a piece of fabric that wont fray. In the photo of the finished turkey hat above, I used brown felt. For this tutorial however, I used yellow fleece. The best thing about fleece is that it has a bit of stretch in it – you can make a one size fits all!

With your fabric folded, cut out a strip of fabric. For my headbands I cut the fleece a little big – 18 inches long – because I couldn’t measure all of the kids heads…I went with three inches wide.

Once your fabric is trimmed, sew around all of the edges. I went with a straight 1/4 inch seam (but I have also used a zig zag stitch). When finished, it should look like this:

Next, prepare the body of the turkey. I’ve tried this two ways. I created a pattern for the first set I made. You can pick it up over on my blog It’s a Tradition. For this set of hats however, I decided to wing it and see how hard it would be…

For the body of the turkey, I used two sides of a class as a guide.

Next up, the feathers. Again, I winged it 🙂 Just sketched the feathers out on some felt, but the patter is available over on my blog.

With felt, I like to do a lot of the sewing before I cut the shapes out. Sew around the edges of the body, leaving a little room at the bottom for stuffing. Sew all the way around the edge of the feathers and then straight up the center…

Once the items are sewn up, go a head and cut them out with scissors (don’t worry if the shapes aren’t perfect, it all works out).

Once everything is cut out, arrange the feathers on the headband.

I pinned the feathers down and then stitched along the bottom of each to secure them (with the bigger feathers in the pattern, it may be helpful to tack them down up higher as well).

Once the feathers are stitched on, go ahead and add the body. I simply stitched around the outside of the turkey’s body again. Glue on googly eyes, gobble gobble and beak (yes, I forgot the beak in this case).

Next, add a little velcro to the edges of the hat so that it can be adjusted and secured. You just need to use the rough side, as it will stick directly to the fleece.

Super great! You’re all done. Unless you want to add some embellishments…We added names to ours.

Even with the embellishments, these aren’t as fancy as some of Pottery Barn’s hats, but hey we’re talking boys here. Cutesy just doesn’t fly!

If you like this project stop by my blog. This week, I am posting alternate versions of the Thanksgiving hat. And, though I don’t have any girls, I’ve even come up with a girls hat…

Thanks Michelle. It was fun participating in your boys week!

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Thanks Tauni for such a fun turkey craft just in time for Turkey day!

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