Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, but Halloween and Christmas get all the craft love, you know? There's so much good food, family time, and counting your blessings that make me want to see Thanksgiving get a little bit of the spotlight.
Usually, we stay home for Thanksgiving. My husband and I have families that are spread out all over the country, and getting together means paying for 5 plane tickets or making a 24 hour drive. Not counting stops. Um- no thanks. Finally, though, 4 out of 5 of us are in the Western US, so last Thanksgiving we drove up to Colorado and spent Thanksgiving with my mom and siblings. My 7 year old daughter was the only girl cousin there, so I decided to make her something special to wear for Thanksgiving. Today I'm sharing with you this cute shirt with an easy embellishment:
Here's what you need:
A shirt (great way to re-use a shirt with a stain, or buy one on clearance)
Felt or fabric (I used orange, white, and brown felt)
Heat n Bond
Wired Ribbon (mine was sheer 1 1/2 inch width ribbon)
Glue gun/sticks
Scissors, pencil
Iron/Ironing Pad
Skill level: Easy
Time: An hour or less
1. Design your shape. I used my Silhouette software and took elements from two different shapes to create my turkey. The "feathers" came from a scalloped circle that I cut, and the turkey came from one of the Turkey shapes. (If you'd like the file, I'd be happy to send it to you. Just drop me an email!)
2. Supposedly you can use the Silhouette to cut felt. I know you can use it to cut fabric by applying Heat n Bond first, then running it through the machine. I tried this with my felt, but it hardly cut at all. I have had many problems with my blade, though, so feel free to give it a try. In the end, I just cut my shapes in paper, ironed the Heat n Bond onto my felt (following the directions on the wrapper), then traced the shapes onto the paper liner.
3. If you're doing that, once you have your shapes cut out, remove the paper liner from the Heat n Bond. You're ready to iron your fabric onto your shirt. Repeat this for each piece of the turkey.
(If you're going to make a turkey face, do it now. I wasn't going to, then changed my mind and added one later. It was a little harder that way). Details below.
Now fuse the orange feather piece onto the shirt, then fuse the white feather piece onto the orange feathers
5. Take your ribbon and roll the edge over twice. Put a dot of glue on the top and bottom to hold it in place so you have clean edge to start with. You could also just melt the edges with a lighter or small flame.
Now make a ruffle by simply folding your ribbon every inch or so and adding a tiny dot of hot glue to hold it in place.
6. Once you have your ribbon the way you like it, glue the ends down, then hot glue your brown turkey body piece over the ribbon, making sure to cover up any empty space below. I only glued from about halfway down the body to leave the top part free.
7. I wasn't going to use a face, but I didn't like how it looked. So, I added a piece of fabric
for the beak, using the same Heat n Bond method described above. For the eyes, I simply used a fine-tip Sharpie Marker to draw two little dots.
It's little beady eyes follow me everywhere. I hate that.
Here's the finished shirt--
And here it is on my daughter. I paired it with a matching skirt that I whipped up. Won't she look extra cute for Thanksgiving?
A note-- If you want to sew the feather pieces on, it will add a little stability to it. You certainly can't put it in the wash like this, but hey.
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