with the holidays right around the corner,it always reminds me of how much my family truly enjoys thanksgiving. it’s a greattime for us all to get together. of course we eat way too much but we spend a lot oftime in fellowship. and as a family sitting around the thanksgiving table and just talkingabout all those things we really are thankful for. you know our health, the fact that we’vegot man sewing that we get to do creative projects for and of course the executioner.the executioner you say, who’s the executioner? well this is the executioner but wait, there’smore. thankful for the executioner? let me explaina little bit more. this little turkey was our holiday decoration that used to look justlike this. now this little guy right here,
he was made by my wife when she was in thethird grade. i will not say how many years ago that was, you’re welcome. but he hasfallen apart over too many holiday meals so today on man sewing our tutorial is goingto be how to make one of these awesome thanksgiving pineapple centerpieces for your holiday table.let’s get started. ok now, step one, drop into the descriptionbelow and print yourself out a free printable for turkey time. this has got all of the partsand pieces you need, plus the little layout instructions there. but i’m going to walkyou through step by step putting the turkey together. you’re going to need to cut outtwo of each of these shapes. and even before you do that, what i do is i cut apart theshapes themselves because each one of these
is going to end up on a different piece offelt. i’ll be using brown for the turkey body, right? or that body of the head i shouldsay. we’re going to use our red for the wattle. we have black and white for our eyes.and then we have our orange for our beak. one of the felt squares is plenty, per coloris all you need. and most of these we’re going to cut both layers at the same time.and you’ll be destroying your pattern as you go but they’re a free printable so justprint more as you need. now one of the major tricks when dealing with this felt. i’mgoing to cut them both layers but the first thing i’m going to do. i’ve folded it.so i’m going to fold it in half. and i want to cut this fold out. and that is going tokeep the layers from shifting around. so you
just fold that like that, cut that. then simplytake your template shape, put that right on top of there. and if you want you could puta few straight pins to keep things from moving around. you’re going to be cutting rightalong the edge so don’t put the pin right near the cutting area. like that for someof your bigger pieces, ok? and then i’m just going to take my big shears and begincutting around. and i’m cutting through the paper and both layers of the felt. thelocal scissor sharpener is really going to appreciate this, this technique, i guaranteeyou. when you get into the corners kind of go slow and try to roll your felt throughthe scissor as you’re closing the blade. come back to the end and close the blade asyou roll it around the corners. now the key
is, is you’re cutting both pieces at once.so even if you’re not perfectly on the line, both pieces should be the same size and samematch. now we’re just going to unpin. and one ofthings you may want to do is you may want to take your turkey heads and immediatelyseparate them and flip them so they’re opposites. we need one for the right side of the headand one for the left side of the head. the next piece we’re going to sew on is goingto be the wattle. and the wattle lays right in the opening here, the arch. and i justbasically set it in place. most of this is going to be done through topstitching. andthen i’m also watching this joint here. i don’t want it sitting on top of the birdtoo much because we’re actually going to
come back in and stuff this later. so thewattle is going to pop up just a little bit above the turkey head. and we’re just goingto run a line of stitching across there. and i’ve already done that for you so let meshow you what that looks like. so there’s that line of stitching that goes through there.and we do that first and then we’re going to do the very similar step to the beak. andnow the beak kind of lays on here so that you can kind of see that the tips of the beakcome back in and touch the tips of the black thread. and let me show you how i’m goingto sew this one down. i’m using a standard straight stitch. this is not free motion.this is just regular piecing. i’ve got my needle down on the corners so i can pivot.so i’m going around what would have been
the back of the beak. and then because thebeak will get stuffed but the wattle will not, we’re going to actually stitch anddo a cut thread. right here so that now when that’s done you can see i started at thetop of the beak where it meets the wattle, came down, pivot, pivot and back to the edge.and you’re going to do that for both sides of the turkey. and then you’re going togo ahead and start getting ready for your eyes, ok? so i have assembled one of these already.remember we have our opposites. the first eye, i’m basically going to just sew intoposition. but one of the things i’m watching out for is when i’m doing this i went toabout my first knuckle’s worth or the first
joint on my fingers distance down from thetop and around. we’re going to actually sew these at the end right sides together.so we need a seam allowance perimeter is what i’m trying to say there for us. so i stitchmy first eye on kind of willy nilly, wherever it lands. but then the second one to makesure it comes on perfect, i’m going to take and put on the two pieces of the head togetherlike you see it here. and then i am feeling where this one goes. so then i’m going tobring it around and i’m literally just kind of looking from the top on both sides, liningthem up. and then i’ll also take the black part. and i’m kind of lining the black piecesup and then once i’ve got this, i basically don’t let go of the one that’s about tobe stitched. take this one, set it aside.
back under the sewing machine and we’regoing to start by sewing the black pupil down first. because that’s sewing from the centerand that’s going to keep everything from moving. and now i’m just taking a few stitches.i lift my presser foot. my needle’s down. take a few stitches. and i’m just goingto work my way all the way around outside of that. you can’t see the threads at allon the black so don’t worry if you don’t do the perfect job. the white will be a littlemore crucial. so this is a good place to warm up. and then grab your little scissors outand we’re just going to trim away these extra threads, the jump stitches. there. ok. now next step we are going to lay these birdhead right sides together like you see. and
now i’m going to stitch up and around allthe way to the end. i’ll talk you through that as i go. i usually start at the backof the head actually. and if these pieces don’t line up perfect maybe your beak isnot exactly the same on both sides, it’s ok because we’re going to stuff this. sowe’re going to line the edges up as we sew and not worry about what happens in the middleof the project. and i’ve got about a quarter inch seam allowance. i’m kind of eyeballingit as i go. and i’ve started on the back and i’m working my way up and around theback of the neck, over the top of his head. these are such fun projects to make. i justlove doing them. ok and at this point i’m kind of now looking more at what’s goingto happen with my beak and my wattle. maybe
i should have said the turkey’s beak andwattle. ok, now listen close, what i’m doing is i’m going up over the wattle. and i’mgoing to go around the orange of the beak to the tip of the beak. from the tip of thebeak, i’m going to pivot back around and i’m heading back around to the union wherethe wattle and the beak meet, so right in there. i’m going to stop. i’m going topivot and now i’m going to sew around the wattle, almost there. i am not stitching thewattle to the neck right now. i want to make sure those stay separate. i come around. istop and pivot. now i can totally reorganize. now i’m going to be sewing down the frontside of the neck. and you probably want to backstitch it at the end to make sure everythingholds nice and tight because it’s going
to get a little bit of play each holiday.needle up. ok, so that comes out like that. and then i reach in here and i literally startpoking the head through until you can see the eyes. and here comes the beak. and thebeak, i have had a couple of different challenges with. i find that i can get my finger in there.and every now and again, and you’re going to laugh because i just did it again, i didn’tquite get both layers stitched. so there’s my finger right? and i thought that mightbe happening. now here’s the easy fix. you just tuck it right back in. and everythingelse is secured, ok? and what happened in there is i was looking from one side and notthe other. so now i’m going to flip the bird over. the beak and the wattle are theonly little tricky spots and i think tricky
is definitely an exaggeration there. so let’sjust get that stitched a little bit better for us. there we go. let’s see if it workedthis time. i’m going to pop it out. when i first started making these if you’re lookingreal close around the set, they’re everywhere because i made several samples to get it rightthe first time. it was quite the challenge, ok? now what i need to do is find myself somethinglike the purple thing. the purple thing is going to go up inside and we can poke thewattle out the bottom. and if i can get to the top of the beak i can poke that out throughthe top. and i’m kind of working each one, each piece at a time to get to it and thenit will match. and it will just pop through.
then you can kind of get your fingernail andstart to tug. it’s a tight little opening we made in there. but it’s the perfect sizepieces. so i have to assume. and that’s a funny thing. like i said, i decided to re-makeall of this because my wife made hers in third grade and it’s seen better days. and soi had to create this but i didn’t have the beak to work with so all of this is kind ofa custom re-creation. but once we have it all like this, then you’re just going tograb yourself a cool bag of stuffing right? take your stuffing and believe it or not it’sgoing to probably take almost this much. but what i did is i took and first with my thumbsi start pushing the stuffing in right? like i’m doing. and then you go up into hereand then you can come around and you can use
your finger and you’re just going to stuffthe beak and not the wattle. so the wattle lays a little flatter. then you can take thatpurple thing and you can make sure your stuffing gets all the way to the tip of the beak. justlike you like it there. ok, use your fingers to massage it into the right shape. and thenwe can put a little bit more stuffing up inside. give it some nice body. and then the final is to check it for ourdisplay. find yourself a beautiful pineapple. and in the middle of hamilton, missouri thistime of year wasn’t easy ladies and gentlemen. so there’s our pineapple we’ve got. andthis little turkey is going to lay right on that edge like that. and you can see i’veoverstuffed my bird today. take some of that
stove top back out. and we are ready to decoratefor the rest of our holiday feast. and in all seriousness, thank you so very much forbeing a part of our man sewing experience. we have had the best time ever so far. andwe are just getting warmed up. so have a yourself a great thanksgiving and we’ll see you nexttime at man sewing.