How to make a turkey shirt

A friend of mine saw this turkey shirt, so we decided to give it a try.  All you need is a solid color shirt (we chose brown), some scrap pieces of your favorite fabric, wonder under, buttons, rick rack, an iron and some scissors.  The turkey body and feathers will be appliqued onto the shirt, then a sewing machine can be used to stitch around all your pieces.

Find a plain color shirt to applique the turkey onto.  It can be one you already have.

Next, you must choose what type of turkey body to applique on.  There are so many different designs to choose from on the internet.  You can print them out, cut and trace.  We made up our own turkey body, which is fairly simple to do if you are quick to decide.  Otherwise you can spend all day trying to perfect a design.

Place your turkey body in the middle of your shirt to see what size feathers you would like to have.  Then cut out feathers for your turkey as well.  Below is the turkey body on the brown shirt.  After you have cut out the feathers, place them around the turkey's body however you would like.  It works well to cut out the number of feathers you need to know how many to cut out of the material.

Now that you have your turkey body cut out and your feathers, decide what fabrics to go with your body and feathers.  Cut small rectangle pieces of fabric to cut your feathers out of as well as the turkey body.  Here is where the wonder under comes in.  There are 2 different ways to go about using the wonder under.

 Option #1:  Out of your rectangle pieces of material, iron the rough side of the wonder under onto the back of your chosen material.  Then trace the feather or turkey body on the paper (wonder under) side of the material and cut out.  Last, peel the wonder under from your cut out feather or turkey body.  Now, it is ready to be ironed onto the shirt.

Option #2:  Trace the feathers and turkey body onto the wonder under and cut out.  Then iron onto piece of material and cut extra material off.  Now, peel wonder under from your cut out feather or turkey body.  This option takes a little longer, but saves scraps of wonder under and helps in the process of peeling wonder under off of material.
Peeling the wonder under is sometimes tricky.  Make sure the wonder under attaches to the material, otherwise it will not iron onto the shirt.

This is a picture of the rectangles ironed onto the wonder under.  Notice the wonder under is ironed onto the back of the material.

Once all of your feathers and turkey body have been cut out and ironed onto the wonder under.  You are ready to arrange them on the shirt.  I chose to add some feet by using small pieces of pink rick rack.  These can be placed under the turkey body before the turkey is ironed onto the shirt.  This will hold the rick rack in place.

If you choose to, sew around all of the edges to keep from fraying.  I also sewed buttons for eyes and cut a small triangle out for the beak.

And now you have a lovely turkey shirt for Thanksgiving...