Thanksgiving Word Cloud Pillow + 15 Beautiful Etsy Pillow Finds!!

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Thanksgiving is all about tradition, family, and being thankful. This Thanksgiving Word Cloud Pillow includes a wonderful combination of Thanksgiving-related words on top of a giant turkey. It’s festive and fun and brings some color to the autumn colors. This is an easy pillow to make and a gorgeous addition to your Thanksgiving decor!

Thanksgiving Word Cloud Pillow Colors

Typical Thanksgiving or Fall colors are browns, dark reds, greens, and earth tones. I used all of those colors and more to brighten up this pillow. While this pillow does require many different layers of vinyl, all letters of the same colors print together. You just need to line up each layer of colored letters on top of the white turkey, iron each layer, and that’s it!

More Pillow designs to check out:

Thanksgiving Word Cloud Pillow

Pillow cases are a fun project to make with the Cricut machines. This particular design is a little due to the number of layers needed. To cut the shapes and letters I used my wonderful Cricut Maker. This thing is a crafting game changer and I can’t say enough good things about it. If you’re not familiar with the Cricut, read my blog post about The Amazing Cricket Maker to learn more.

For each design I create an SVG, PDF, EPS, and AI version of the design. You can get all four versions for free by clicking below:

Materials Needed to Thanksgiving Word Cloud Pillow

Iron-On Vinyl
Blank pillow case – I used this one, a natural cotton canvas pillow case.
Cricut machine or scissors
Cricut EasyPress 2 or an iron
EasyPress Mat or a towel
Parchment paper or a clean white piece of cloth or muslin (for ironing)

MAKING THE THANKSGIVING WORD CLOUD PILLOW

Making the Thanksgiving Word Cloud Pillow is somewhat complicated. It involves cutting out the various shapes and lettering, ironing them on layer by layer, and carefully peeling off the backing so that everything adheres to the pillow case.

Step 1: Upload the SVG to Cricut Design Space

Download the SVG file through the links within this post and upload it into Cricut Design Space. The file will look like this:

STEP 2: Cut the Shapes and Lettering

Next, choose your desired colors of iron-on vinyl you want to use for the designs and lettering and cut per the Cricut machine prompts. For this project I used the following colors (Wine, Cornflower, Kelly, Espresso foil, Gold, Yellow, Beige):

NOTE: When cutting Iron-on vinyl, remember to turn on Mirroring when cutting the designs. If you don’t turn on Mirroring, the designs and lettering will be backwards when you transfer them to the pillow. To learn more about using mirroring with Cricut Design Space, check out this blog post.

STEP 3: Weed the Design Pieces and Lettering

I cut all of the layers first, then weed each layer one at a time. Iron-on vinyl is fairly easy to weed with the use of a Weeding tool and/or tweezers. I use this Weeder and the tweezers in this set (which also includes a Weeder) in all my Cricut crafts.

STEP 4: Ironing on the Designs and Lettering

Preheat your EasyPress to the correct temperature and time based on the type of vinyl being used (see screenshots below). You can find that information on the Cricut Heat Guide page here by plugging in the requested information.

After I enter in my desired materials for this project and click “Apply”, this is what I see:

NOTE: Before beginning the iron on process, arrange your vinyl pieces in order so you can see the complete picture.

Place the clean blank pillow case laid out flat on top of the EasyPress mat (seen below) or a towel.

When making a pillow with multiple layers of vinyl, I layer each layer of wording on top of the next so they line up properly on the design, in this case the turkey. When it’s time to iron on a layer, you just peel off all but the bottom layer of words, iron on the word layer, then line up the remaining layers and repeat.

After you have all the layers lined up, determine where you want to put the design and lettering. Once you have determined placement, pre-heat the pillow case based on the instructions on the Cricut Heat Guide page (it’s usually about 5 seconds). Once pre-heated, apply the first layer and iron on for about 5 seconds so the vinyl adheres. I like to use Parchment paper between the iron and the vinyl backing to keep the underlying design from coming in contact directly with the iron. Allow the ironed on piece of vinyl to cool for a bit before removing the backing.

NOTE: Don’t worry, you will iron all the layers for the full amount of time necessary, this is just to get the various layers in place so they can all be ironed on completely.

Once it has cooled, slowly peel away the vinyl backing making sure the vinyl is adhering to the material. If not, press the backing back down and re-iron for a few seconds. Peel away the backing slowly and carefully until the backing is completely removed.

Continue with the next layer by re-lining up the remaining layers and removing all but the bottom layer, the “Leftovers” layer. Press down firmly so that the vinyl and backing sticks to the layer below.