Knitted Turkey Wine Bottle Topper Pattern

Hello Friends,


I hope you are having a good weekend. It is the Thanksgiving weekend in Canada and I went to my fiance's mom's place yesterday and we had a wonderful thanksgiving dinner. Liam's mom loved the turkey wine bottle topper I knitted for her. I was so glad that she liked it.I am sharing the pattern I made up below if you would like to make a turkey for Thanksgiving. This can also work very well as a finger puppet for children. I enjoy making these toppers because they are perfect for topping wine bottles given as gifts and are so festive and fun!

Materials needed:

Yarn: Bernat Cotton yarn for the red, brown, beige and black parts of the turkey.
Needles: 3.25 mm double pointed needles
Darning needle

Side of turkey

Back 

Pattern:

Body:

• Cast on 20 stitches
• Knitted seed stitch (k1,p1, next row p1,k1)
• Continue for desired length. I knitted in seed stitch until it measured 5 inches

Head and beak:

• Switch to the red yarn
• Knit 20 stitches around for desired length
• Beak: add the beige yarn and make one two stitches in the center of the head after about 8-10 rows. Place stitches on a cable stitch holder and move all red stitches divided onto two needles and knit back and forth for two rows.  Pick up the beige stitches and pick up the desired amount of stitches to make the size of beak you would like. then knit in the round and decrease until one stitch remains. I picked up 4 other red stitches.
• Pick up the previous knitting needles again that you put aside to knit the beak. Begin to decrease by knitting two together every 4th stitch, then 3rd,2nd,1 stitch every other row until you have 8 remaining stitches and bind off.

Wings:

• Cast on 6 stitches
• Garter stitch (knit both sides) until desired length.
• Begin decreasing by knitting two together when desired length of the middle of the wing
• Bind of when you get to one stitch remaining.
• Leave a long length of yarn when binding off around 8 inches to attach it to the body when you are finished.
• attach the wings to the side of the turkey just below where the red yarn begins for the head.

Back feathers

• Cast on two stitches with black yarn
• Make one stitch (M1) knit-wise every knit row until have 6 stitches across then stitch to brown yarn.
• Knit the right sides and M1 in the middle of the row, purl the wrong sides
• Knit until 17 stitches across
• Add on the beige color. knit 3 rows and M1 on knit sides
• Bind off:
• For top of feathers I used the channel island bind off method to get the feathers at the top to have texture. You can follow the YouTube video I used to do this method using Knit Purl Hunter's video.
• Leave a long length of yarn when binding off around 8 inches to attach it to the body when you are finished.
• *Repeat this twice to make two pieces and then sew them together and attach onto the back of the turkey body.
• Attach the feathers to the back of the head of the turkey (as pictured above) by sewing yarn behind the head to the feathers so the feathers stand up and do not flop backwards.

Snood:

• Cast on 3 stitches in red yarn
• Garter stitch for 3-5 rows and bind off
• Leave a long length of yarn when binding off around 8 inches to attach it to the head when you are finished.
• Attach the snood just below the beak

Eyes:

• Use black yarn and sew desired eye size onto the front of face. I knitted into the inside of the head and came through the back of work and tied on a stitch to back to fasten.
• Sew the eyes using the yarn then come through the back and fasten the yarn on the wrong side (inside of the head) do the same for the second eye.

Finishing notes:

• Assemble all of the pieces together using the yarn from binding off the pieces. Make sure to leave enough yarn hanging from beginning pieces to use to weave in the ends and tighten the work at the end and fasten so it does not come apart.
• There will be a lot of threads to weave in when you are finished especially in the back with switching to three different colors. 
• You can change any of the colors given in this pattern or even change the size or length of the pieces to make your turkey unique.

Your turkey is done! Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank you for visiting today and hope that you make the turkey for your next thanksgiving dinner to give to the host or to enjoy for yourself. I have not tested out this pattern since making the one turkey so I hope that it works for you. Please let me know in the comments if you knitted it and how you like the pattern.