I’ve always loved garlands. Last year I added several felt ball garlands to our seasonal decor, and this year I decided to make felt shape garlands. Using my Cricut, I can create felt shapes for any occasion, and my newest obsession is my DIY Thanksgiving Felt Garland. We don’t have many Thanksgiving decorations, but ever since taking over Thanksgiving hosting duties a couple of years ago I’ve been slowly adding to our collection.
This post is sponsored by Cricut.Â
Can we talk about how much fun my daughter’s bed is to decorate for the holidays? I am just in love with her Pottery Barn Treehouse bed, and so is she. Decorating it for the holidays has become my new hobby, so, of course, I had to come up with some custom Thanksgiving decorations. But this banner would be just as cute across a fireplace mantel, strung on a wall or even hanging on a serving table for your Thanksgiving meal.
Thanksgiving Felt Garland Tutorial
If you haven’t yet used your Cricut to cut felt, it’s time to try it. Just like cutting paper and vinyl, the Cricut gives you perfect shapes and since you can customize them with any colors and shapes you want they are so much better than store-bought options.
Materials
- Cricut Felt – Summer Sky & Carousel
- Cricut Maker or Explore
- Cricut Brayer
- Yarn Needle
- Twine
Directions:
I created my Thanksgiving felt banner using images from Cricut Design Space. If you are a Cricut user, you can save time and my design to get you started cutting. Find my felt banner design HERE. If you want to can make adjustments to my design – size, change the leaves, etc, but if you love it you can use it as is. I cut four of each shape for my banner, but then only ended up hanging three of each shape. If you want more or less just delete or duplicate as needed.
For this banner, I used five colors of Cricut Felt (four colors from the Summer Sky pack and orange from the Carousel pack). If you haven’t cut felt with your Cricut before, it can be cut with a Cricut Maker or Cricut Explore.
On Cricut’s website, the product indicates that a Deep Cut Blade is needed to cut Cricut felt, however, my machine recommended the fine point blade. I tried both. The deep blade did a beautiful job, but I felt like it was cutting too much into the matt, so I tried the fine. The fine point did a nice job, but there were a couple of corners that needed a final trim. It is important to note that my fine blade was not new, so it is likely already a bit dull from use on other materials. A new blade would likely cut clean. Either way, my recommendation is for whichever blade you have available.
While Cricut Felt is a bit thinner than some fonts I’ve crafted in the past, what I really like about Cricut felt is that it tends to leave less lint on my mat than other felts. It gets linty, but less. And Cricut felt cuts super easily. If you haven’t tried it yet, this is the project to try!
The mat below was a brand new mat, this is all the lint that was left behind after the first sheet of felt – the red.
Make sure your mat is very sticky before cutting. Either a new mat or a newly cleaned mat is best. If it isn’t, the felt might slip. For even more support, you can just a little painter’s tape around the edge. My best tip when cutting felt (or other thick materials) is to use a brayer. I don’t usually use one with vinyl, but it makes such a difference with thicker materials. I was able to cut all five colors (plus one extra for another project) on the same mat without cleaning it in between. The brayer makes a huge difference.
After cutting out the leaves and turkeys, use a yarn needle to thread your twine through them. There is no need to punch a hole, just push the needle through.
Using twine I needed the largest needle and a good push to get the twine through the felt shapes, but I love the look of the rustic twine with the garland.
What kind of Thanksgiving decorations do you have?
If you like Thanksgiving Felt Garland, you will love my Halloween Mickey Bat felt garland. I have an idea for felt Christmas garland coming soon too.