First off, welcome to every one visiting from A Little Tipsy. So excited to be guest posting while Michelle enjoys a little time with her new baby!
While scanning the pages of Pottery Barn Kids, I came across this photo:

There are so many great things about this photo – the darling kids table and tablecloth, the seat backs – but, what I really love are the hats. Of course, I don’t have the budget to purchase all of the kids hats from Pottery Barn, so I decided to come up with my own version.

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. 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   but you can download the pattern here. 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!
I’ve also worked on patterns for the pilgrim hats for boys and girls. Check back, hopefully I will have time to post it later this week!
Linking up here:
Blue Cricket Design
Tatertots and Jello
Skip to My Lou
Today’s Creative