Embroidery Hoop Turkey Tutorial

I know we haven't even gotten through Halloween yet, but I'm moving on to Thanksgiving :) I saw Betz White's embroidery hoop snowman on Pinterest, and that got me thinking about what other wall decorations I could make with embroidery hoops. I decided that a Thanksgiving turkey might be possible. Since "burlap" is this month's Point of View theme, I thought this might be a good project to put together this month. So... here is my project for the October Point of View reveal...

This turned out better than I ever imagined it would. Isn't he adorable?!?  This is an unbelievably quick and easy project, too. There is no sewing involved. All you need is a glue gun. Want to make this cutie for Thanksgiving?

Here's the how-to...

Materials:

• 4" and 7" embroidery hoops
• burlap, 7" square and 10" square
• felt (Scraps will do for the face and feet. You'll need larger pieces for the feathers.)
• cardboard (I used a Cheez-It box from the recycle bin.)
• glue gun
• scissors

Instructions:

Step 1: Print out these templates at 100% (no scaling, do not "fit to page")...


Step 2: Stretch your burlap inside of your embroidery hoops.

Trim the burlap to 3/4" from the edges of the back of the embroidery hoops. Use your glue gun to glue the edges of the burlap to the inside of the back of the hoops.

Step 3: Take your two embroidery hoops and place the smaller hoop over the top portion of the larger hoop, making sure that the screw on the smaller hoop is at about 5 o'clock. The felt snood will cover the screw. Use your glue gun to glue the two embroidery hoops together like so...

Step 4: Using the templates from Step 1, cut out the beak (yellow), snood (red), two eyes (black or dark brown), and two feet (brown) from your felt.

The red piece is called the "snood". Ignore the feet in this picture... I ended up cutting the legs shorter.

Use your glue gun to glue your felt face pieces to the small embroidery hoop, covering the screw on the smaller hoop with the red snood.

Flip your hoops over and glue the feet onto the back of the large embroidery hoop.

Step 5: Cut out your felt feathers using the large feather template from Step 1. You need five feathers. I used green, yellow, purple, red, and orange felt. Cut out 5 cardboard feathers using the smaller feather template.

Use your glue gun to glue one cardboard feather to the back of each felt feather. This will add stability to the feathers so that they won't flop over when your turkey is hanging up.

Step 6: Fan out your feathers to your liking. Set your turkey body on top to make sure you like the look of it and that it fits. Remove the turkey body. Starting with the bottom layer of feathers, begin gluing the feathers to each other everywhere that they overlap until all five are firmly attached together.

Glue the back of the large embroidery hoop of your turkey body to the feather assembly. You're done!

* In order to hang my turkey, I glued a paper clip to the back of the center feather at the very top of the cardboard. Also, I was a little concerned about how stable the turkey would be using my glue gun to put it together, but I was pleasantly surprised by how sturdy it feels.*

Doesn't he look similar to my Thanksgiving place card printable that I designed last year?

I'm still thinking of other embroidery hoop ideas. A Santa Claus or a reindeer might be next!

Now it's your turn... Check out this month's Point of View collage and link up your past or present burlap-themed projects at the Point of View Burlap Link Party!




I'm linking up...