How to Make a Thanksgiving Turkey Photo Garland

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World!

Because all your loved ones are just a bunch of turkeys!

Looking for a fun, festive, fuss-free decoration for Thanksgiving? I LOVE this personalized turkey garland that illustrates all of your guests and loved ones as their truest selves. It’s super easy to create, can be displayed just about anywhere, and is guaranteed to be the hit of the holiday! For bonus points, it also allows you to show all your loved ones that you love them so much that you’re willing to sneakily print photos of them off of social media for your own nefarious purposes. Everyone needs regular reminders that their photos aren’t safe online!

Here’s how!

Materials

Here’s everything that you need to make this personalized turkey garland:

• photos of friends, family, and pets. Choose 4″x6″ photos that are cropped so that the chosen head is between 3″ and 3.5″ tall. It doesn’t even matter if this makes the head a bit pixelated or blurry–we’re not making an heirloom that will be passed down to future generations here… or ARE we?!?
• brown cardstock or similar paper. Construction paper or brown paper bags would also work well for this. Thin cardboard food packaging could also work in a pinch, but it’s not quite dark enough for a perfect match. If you get really desperate, just take a brown crayon or marker to white cardstock–a bit of scribbly effect would honestly make this look even funnier!
• white paper. Junk mail envelopes or any scrap white paper, including the backs of receipts, is fine for this. I used the non-watermarked parts of the backs of the cropped photos for this, and I managed to squeak out juuuuust enough!
• white printer paper and a pencil for tracing. Any thin white paper will do.
• scissors and glue. For my first iteration of this project, I used double-sided tape, but maybe I keep the thermostat too cold in my house, because it would not stay stuck! Using white Elmer’s glue took only a few seconds longer, and I’m confident that everything will stay stuck. You could probably also get away with using hot glue, but you’d have to be careful not to warp the paper with the heat.
• twine and tape for the garland.

Step 1: Create the turkey template.

Because this is just for your own personal use, Google to find a copyright-free line art illustration of a cartoon-style turkey carcass, blown up on your computer screen to approximately 6.5″ tall. You can absolutely use a different size, but remember to resize the photo heads to be proportionate.

Gently rest a piece of white printer paper over the image, then gently trace it with a pencil.

Cut out the image to make the turkey template, then separately trace and cut out just the leg bone to make the leg bone template.

Step 2: Trace and cut out all the pieces.

For each turkey, you need one photo head, one turkey cut from brown cardstock, and two leg bones cut from white paper.

For the best photo heads, try to cut exactly around each person’s head, omitting any part of their neck and all their extra chins. I tried to keep most of each person’s hairstyle, although I gave little haircuts as necessary.

If you have multiples of these to make and a computerized die-cutter, I HIGHLY recommend creating a vector image that can be machine-cut. I have a Cricut, and although I don’t use it for most projects, I loooooove using it for tedious and time-consuming projects like this!

Step 3: Glue all the pieces together.

Place the head to slightly overlap the top of the carcass, place the white leg bone pieces over the brown leg bone template, and glue everything in place. If there’s some brown leg bone peeking out around the white leg bone pieces, just trim it away.

Step 4: Attach the finished turkeys to the garland.

Tape the twine to the back of each turkey in two spots, adjusting the spacing however you prefer. Leave enough twine at each end of the garland to tie it.

Alternatively, you could mount these decorations to a window or mirror with Command strips (I sent a set of my kid and her roommates to them to stick to their dorm room door), or attach them to place card holders to show everyone where they should sit at the Thanksgiving table.

I know it’s probably a little immature, but I absolutely CANNOT stop laughing at my Thanksgiving turkey photo garland. Why is the one with the dog randomly the funniest?!?

Don’t eat turkey? It would take a little more work, but I also think you could pop someone’s head on top of a piece of cardstock pumpkin pie for equal humor, or rig each person up as their own personal Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. I call dibs on Snoopy!

P.S. Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page for photos, resources, and other bits of the weird stuff I do all day.

How To Carve a Quilt Block Jack-o-Lantern

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

Get ready to make your neighbors jealous, because you’re about to carve the craftiest Jack-o-Lantern on the block!

I love a Jack-o-lantern that shows off my personality, and now that I’m an perimenopausal empty-nester, that personality is apparently sewing, sewing, and nothing but sewing (Okay, I’ve also developed an interest in Civil War battlefields, but that one is so objectively cringe that I’m not ready to talk about it yet). Like, y’all. I used to like sewing back well enough when my kids were little, but now I am obsessed. I genuinely CANNOT STOP SEWING. I just keep thinking of new things I want to sew! I do not even have time to sew all the things I currently want to sew, and yet I keep on finding more things to sew!

ANYWAY, thanks to my possible midlife crisis that is resolving itself through sewing, obviously my Jack-o-lantern this year had to be sewing-themed. And the best way to make a Jack-o-lantern that looks like an obvious sewing project is to make it into a quilt block! Fortunately, carving a quilt block into a Jack-o-lantern is surprisingly easy, and absolutely much easier than a lot of more conventional Jack-o-lantern templates.

Materials

Here is everything that you need to carve your own quilt block Jack-o-lantern:

• pumpkin. Of course! A real pumpkin is obviously the most eco-friendly, but you can also make a very realistic, carvable pumpkin from papier mache. Carvable store-bought pumpkins are generally not eco-friendly, but if you can find one of those second-hand, then at least you’re saving it from the waste stream!
• pumpkin-carving supplies. Pumpkin carving is so much more comfortable with these janky-looking little plastic pumpkin carving sets! I did throw a tiny fit when my husband came home from the store with a cheap kit of plastic pumpkin-carving tools back when the kids were babies (I was DEEP into the “my babies shall not touch plastic” era), but I changed my tune as soon as I saw how genuinely easier it is to carve pumpkins with them, and we’ve used that same dang set every year for the past 20 years, so I should probably apologize to my husband at some point. I absolutely will not, but I should!
• measuring and marking supplies. The thing that I like the most about these quilt block carvings is that you don’t need a template. You can measure out your template right onto the pumpkin using a ruler or tape measure, and mark it with a washable marker. If you want your marks to be less vulnerable, use a Sharpie, and then wipe off any extraneous marks with an alcohol wipe or hand sanitizer.

Step 1: Choose your quilt block and draw it onto the pumpkin.

A surprising number of quilt blocks work well as Jack-o-lanterns, including Nine Patch, Shoofly, Eccentric Star, and Bear Paw. The trick I use is to leave approximately .25″ between the pieces I want to cut away in order to preserve the sense of the pattern being pieced together.

Choose an simple quilt block pattern that is easy to calculate and draw onto a pumpkin. This Friendship Star pattern, for instance, is super easy to measure out, with a square in the center, surrounded by right triangles whose two adjacent sides are the same length as one side of the square.

You can use a reference book like 5,500 Quilt Block Designs for inspiration, and don’t be afraid to eyeball a design instead of painstakingly measuring it out. Jack-o-lanterns are supposed to look a little wonky!

Step 2: Carve your design into the pumpkin.

Carve your pumpkin by cutting through the lines that you drew. I don’t understand why those little saws work so well, but they do! They also make it a LOT easier to cut these precise lines, especially compared to my pre-kid giant carving knife method.

Be careful when carving out thin pieces–I usually do this with one hand stuck inside my pumpkin, bracing it from the inside. Putting a quarter-inch between pieces gives you plenty of cutting room in case you accidentally over-extend a cut, but in terms of the worst-case scenario, you can stick a piece back on with a toothpick!

When you’re finished with your design, pop a tea light inside (or do what we do and make a little hole in the back to stick twinkle lights through), put the top back on, and enjoy your new quilt block Jack-o-lantern!

I LOVE my quilt block Jack-o-lanterns, and I think they look so pretty lit up on my porch at night. Now, onto my next project: sewing an American Girl doll-sized black T-shirt and leggings set and appliqueing an even tinier skeleton onto it! Stay tuned!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How To Make A No-Sew Wool Felt Mini Quilt Block

 I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

This mini quilt block is cute as a button with no sewing needed!

Y’all know that I am the sewingest sewist who ever sewed (at least in terms of hours logged, lol!), but sometimes even I–or at least my sewing machine!–needs a little break.

But of course, even when I’m not sewing quilt blocks, I still like to make them. These itty bitty guys stand exactly 1.5″ tall, and are made SUPER easily from wool felt. Instead of sewing them, I use a high-quality glue. They turn out adorable every time, and I really like how I can use them to experiment with different color combinations and block patterns without a big commitment.

Here’s how I make them!

Materials

To make these felt mini quilt blocks, you will need:

• felt. If you’re comfortable crafting with wool, wool felt is the peak material for this project. It’s got a great structure and feel, and the thickness of wool felt makes it easy to work with (there’s very little chance of glue bleed-through, for one thing) and gives a very nice finished appearance. This isn’t an affiliate link, but I personally buy all my felt from Weir Crafts–my Gmail tells me that my first order from there was way back in 2012! That being said, if you don’t craft with wool there are tons of high-quality recycled polyester felts in all the beautiful colors of the world, as well.
• glue. With a project this small, details matter a lot, so I do think it’s worth it to use high-quality glue. Fabric glue isn’t necessary, although it’s fine to use, but in my opinion the very best glue for this project is Aleene’s Tacky Glue. A little goes a long way and one bottle lasts forever–it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if I’d also purchased the bottle in these photos way back in 2012!
• measuring and cutting tools. Again, with a project this small, details matter, and the biggest detail is how precisely you measure and cut your pieces. Some of y’all freak out every time I so much as hint at my Cricut being involved in a project, but a Cricut, or a similar die-cutting tool (I also have a VERY old-school Sizzix–honestly, it might also be from 2012…), is a terrific way to get completely accurate, completely uniform cuts. However, a ruler, scissors, and very precise hand-cutting also works perfectly!
• (optional) materials for mounting and/or display. I made a mini autumnal banner with these quilt blocks, but they’d also be very cute as pins or magnets.

Step 1: Pick Your Pattern and Basic Dimensions.

My inspiration for this project was the book, 5,500 Quilt Block Designs, by Maggie Malone. Malone organizes every quilt block ever made by basic pattern, so, for instance, every block that can be made from a basic nine-patch pattern is illustrated in that section.

I love this system, because it tells me that I can make an endless number of 1.5″ quilt blocks just by cutting an endless number of .5″ squares. Part of what I wanted to accomplish with this project was playing with lots of color combinations, so simply by cutting out lots and lots and LOTS of .5″ squares, I could mix and match them and decide on exact block patterns spontaneously as I worked.

Step 2: Cut Out The Quilt Block Pieces.

I cut out LOTS of .5″ squares!

You’ll notice in the photos that I did myself some favors by cutting a few 1″x.5″ rectangles and a few 1″x1″ squares, although you can, of course, create those on the quilt block simply by placing .5″ squares next to each other. I also used a lot of half-square triangles, but I found those easiest to cut by hand with thread scissors.

For the backing of each quilt block, you also need to cut one 1.5″x1.5″ square. I also cut these from felt, but honestly any backing would work, since it won’t show. If you’re making magnets, mat board would be an excellent choice for a backing.

And again, you can cut these little pieces by hand--

–or with the help of your favorite die-cutter:

I will treat myself to a Reese’s pumpkin for every person who gripes at me about my Cricut in the Comments. Y’all need to stop griping at me in the Comments!

Step 3: Place And Glue The Quilt Pieces To The Backing.

This is the fun part!

Now that you’ve got your pieces and your pattern, get comfy, turn on a podcast, and spend a delightful evening with this coziest of cozy crafts. First, build your block just by laying out the pieces on your work surface until you’re fully satisfied with the colors and the pattern.

When you’re happy, it’s time to glue!

Because precision is so important, I like to start at one corner. Simply spread the back of a piece with glue, then set it lightly in place.

Setting it down lightly means that you can adjust it if you need to for alignment. After I get a full row down, I press the whole row more firmly to set the glue in place.

It’s VERY fun to watch your design come to life!

Step 4 (Optional): Add Materials To Mount Or Display Your Finished Blocks.

To display your finished blocks, you could glue a magnet or whip stitch a pinback to the back. I glued twine hangers so that I could hang my mini quilt blocks as a banner.

I was going for an autumnal vibe, but to be honest, I got too excited about all the color combinations and didn’t really stick to my theme. I’m already thinking about trying again for Valentine’s Day, though, since I like Valentine’s Day colors but I’m kind of sick of hearts.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How To Sew An Easy Doll Skirt

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

This doll skirt is SO easy to sew!

When I first started sewing doll clothes, I thought that the process was super complicated–all those tiny seams on all those tiny bits of fabric!–but it turns out that I was just picking out super complicated patterns. Like, I don’t even sew clothes with that many complicated construction techniques and fussy embellishments for myself, much less for a toy!

Fortunately, after lots and lots of sewing lots and lots of picky patterns, I got a lot more comfortable with winging it, and I figured out how to apply the elements of flat construction used in doll clothing to my favorite simple methods of sewing quick clothing pieces.

And now I’ve got all kinds of fun pieces that a kid can mix and match for the doll and that I didn’t have to spend an entire evening cussing down the house to sew!

This doll skirt is particularly easy to sew, even more so with the flat construction method that doll clothing uses. Although my photos here show me making skirts for my niece’s 18-inch doll, you can use this method to sew a skirt for any doll.

Here’s how!

Materials

To make a doll skirt for any size doll, you will need the following:

• fabric. Scraps and stash work great for this project–if you can fold the fabric over twice and still stitch through it, you can use it! For the skirts in these photos, I used one of my kid’s old bedsheets for one skirt, and some stash quilting cotton for the other skirt. See Step 1 for dimensions.
• elastic. You can use most types of elastic for this, so definitely prioritize what you’ve got on hand, but I use 1/4″ elastic for pretty much every doll clothing project, so that’s what I’ve got here. If you use a different width, you’ll want to recalculate the width of fabric you cut and the width of the fold for the elastic channel.
• measuring, cutting, and sewing supplies.

Step 1: Measure and cut the fabric and elastic.

First, measure and cut the elastic for the skirt’s waist. Measure around the doll’s natural waist, and cut elastic to that exact measurement. You’ll lose .5″ from the length of the elastic when you sew the skirt, and that will provide plenty of snugness for a good fit.

For the skirt, first measure from the doll’s natural waist to the spot where you want the bottom hem of the skirt to hit. If you need to add a stitched hem, add .5″ to this measurement, but there are lots of circumstances in which you wouldn’t need to! For instance, I really liked the selvedge of the fabric that I used to make the skirt in the photo below, so I used that for the skirt’s bottom edge and didn’t hem the bottom at all.

For the sharks skirt that I’m sewing in these photos, I similarly used the finished edge of the sheet as my bottom hem–again, no extra sewing needed! The polka dot quilting cotton skirt is the only one in these photos that needed the extra .5″ for the bottom hem.

Assuming you’re using 1/4″ elastic for the waistband, add another .5″ to the measurement to accommodate the waistband casing.

The width of the skirt should be at least twice the length of the elastic, but you can go even longer, especially if your fabric is thin or drapey.

And for all of these measurements, since I’m explicitly trying to use up my stash, I fudge my measurements as necessary if it helps me use up a bit more stash. Would a skirt that’s 1″ longer or 2″ puffier let me avoid tossing a bit of scrap into the garbage? If so, that skirt is going to be a bit longer or puffier!

For a standard American Girl doll, my elastic measurement is 10.5″. My skirt measurement is 5.5″ long with a pre-finished bottom hem, and 6″ if I need to hem the bottom myself, and at least 21″ wide, but I’ll go up to 24″ if it helps me not have to toss a scrap.

Step 2: Measure, fold, and stitch the bottom hem and waistband casing.

If you’re hemming the bottom yourself, fold it over 1/4″ to the inside, then fold it again to hide the raw edge. Stitch along the folded edge to hem.

For the waistband casing, assuming you’re using 1/4″ elastic, fold the top edge of the skirt over 1/2″ to the inside. We’re not minding the raw edge, but if you do, just add enough length to the original skirt measurement to accommodate a double fold here, too.

For the tidiest waistband casing, you’ll be stitching twice: stitch one line along the raw edge, then stitch another line along the fold.

I think this makes the top edge of the waistband look just a little crisper. It’s a tiny detail, but surprisingly noticeable!

Step 3: Insert the elastic and stitch.

Pin a safety pin to one end of the elastic, then thread it through the waistband casing.

At each end of the casing, stitch back and forth to secure the elastic. This is different from circle construction, in which you’d sew the two sides of the skirt together, then insert the elastic, etc. Flat construction like this is often reserved specifically for doll clothing, but I don’t know why, because it’s genius!

Your skirt should now have a finished bottom hem and an elasticized top hem.

Step 4: Stitch the two sides of the skirt together.

Using a 1/4″ hem, stitch the two short sides of the skirt together, right sides together.

Iron the raw edges of the hem to one side, then stitch along the raw edge to make it tidy and flat.

In the above photo, you can see that the line of stitching is barely noticeable, but it’s one more little detail that makes this simple skirt look really nice.

These skirts are so quick and easy to make that they’re honestly kind of addictive. I had to force myself to stop at two so that I could write this tutorial, but just between us, I’m probably about to pop back into my studio and make just a few more.

And then maybe some shirts to match. And maybe a little sweater. And if I’m making a sweater, I should probably make a hat to match!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!