Make a Turkey from Felt and a Clay Pot

The next few posts on justbuildstuff.com are going to be about building the turkey shown in the picture below from some simple materials found at any craft store.

To get started making the turkey you need the following tools.

• Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors

And the following craft supplies.

• 3″ Clay Pot
• Assorted Sheet Felt (we used yellow, orange, brown, lt brown, black, white & green)
• 2″ Diameter Wooden Ball
• Glue On Eyes (optional)

To get started we cut the tail out of felt. First cut a brown piece as large as the entire tail and then individual feathers of the other colors. You can use the picture below as a pattern for cutting the tail and feathers, it may need to be scaled in order to be sized correctly, our tail is approximately 4.5 inches wide at the widest point.

The first thing we cut out was the base for the tail. As shown in the picture below, we just laid the pattern over the felt sheet and cut around it. Do not worry about the precision of your cuts, you can clean the pieces up after you make the initial cut.

Next cut out the feathers, from multiple colors of felt. Test lay the feathers on the tail base, and when you are satisfied with the pattern of the tail feathers glue them onto the base with a hot glue gun.

Cut the large part of the wing from the dark brown felt and the wing tip from a light brown felt, attach the wing tip with a drop of hot glue.

The feet can be cut out next. Aafter all the felt pieces are cut out they can be glued to the 3 inch clay pot as shown in the picture below.

This is the part of the project where we will create our turkey’s head. If you missed the Introduction or Part One- Cutting the Felt go back and check them out.

The first thing to add to the head is the beak cut from orange felt and hot glued in the center of the 2″ Diameter Wooden Ball, after the beak is added and the glue is cool add a drop of glue to the top of the beak and attach the turkey’s wattle over the top of the beak. Next either draw on eyes with a black permanent marker or add Glue On Eyes and place them where they look appropriate above the beak. Check your progress with the photo below.

The only tasks remaining to finish this project are to glue on the head and add the turkey’s Pilgrim Hat.

Gluing on the head is simple, we just used hot glue and offset it towards the front of the pot as shown in the photo below.

The final part of the project is to make the turkey’s hat. The hat is made by taking the cardboard roll from a used up roll of toilet paper. Cut the cardboard to approximately 2 inches in length an wrap black felt around it. No cut a felt circle the same diameter as the cardboard roll with some tabs overhanging the outside of the circle. Glue this to the top of the hat by placing a drop of hot glue on each of the tabs and placing them inside the cardboard tube.  Accent the the hat with a white felt stripe and a gold felt buckle and the turkey if finished and ready for a thanksgiving feast.

The Top 14 Projects That Didn’t Make it Onto JustBuildStuff.com

We have a lot of ideas for projects here at Just Build Stuff and some of them are ideas that for some reason or another we have decided not to build and thus I present you with the top 14 projects that www.justbuildtuff.com decided not to build.

1. The invisible remote- You thought your remote was difficult to find before, wait until you try our invisible remote developed using Top Secret cloaking fromthe British Military. It is shown in the photo below.
2. A TV that always turns on with the volume turned all of the way up and turned to a channel of static and fuzz.
3. The Zune Music player- Oh sorry somebody already made this.
4. A shoe with a preinstalled piece of pea gravel- It is psychologically easier to deal with that pebble in you shoe when you know it’s supposed to be there.
5. The Pet Wolverine- They don’t like being called fluffy and you will never have to worry about intruders again!
6. The gas powered toothbrush- I know you are sick of recharging those batteries and the gas powered lawnmower and chainsaw that you have out in your garage do a great job, but think of the price of gas and how much more you would have to pay just to brush your teeth. Just wait, there will be a fusion-powered toothbrush released eventually and you can get that.
7. Rogaine Back, Chest and Underarm Formula- For those that want to look like they are wearing a shirt, eve when they are not!
8. A phone connected directly to the Bat Cave- Just remember that Bat Man hates prank calls.
9. Build your own language- Kind of like Klingon or how Tolkien created the Elvish language you can create your own language that only you can understand. Be prepared to get funny looks the next time you say “Fromble hicta Zababli!” and expect to get a burger and fries.
10. Sawdust Salad- Ya, a tree is a plant and sawdust comes from trees so it is just natural that somebody sooner or later will start trying to eat sawdust salads, I hope they have lots of salad dressing
11. The magnetic sock and metal shoe combo pack- Never have to tie or strap your shoe on again, the metal shoe sticks tightly against the magnetic sock giving you maximum shoe sock bonding.
12. The ice cream swimming pool- Enjoy a dip into nice cool ice cream filled swimming pool on a hot day. Nothing beats that sticky dried ice cream feeling after you get out of the pool and dry off.
13. Static Electricity Hair-Do Machine- Use the amazing power of static electricity to create the most interesting hair styles you’ve seen in a long time, static electricity adds body to your hair without the need for expensive chemicals. Plus as an added bonus you’ll get a sparking sensation whenever you touch a grounded surface!
14. The Catapult Travel System- Tired of paying high gas prices? Why not try to strap yourself onto this high-powered catapult and lunch yourself to work, the landing might be a little tricky so there is a chance that you will only be able to try it once.

November Time!

Today is the start of November, the year is almost over, Thanksgiving is almost upon us and Christmas is quickly approaching. That means that it is time to flex our creative muscles and build some interesting stuff!


During November www.justbuildstuff.com will be posting some fun crafty ideas for the Thanksgiving holiday and we will be posting some simple and easy to build toy ideas that will make great Christmas gifts. Everything is more fun when you just build stuff.