How to sew Halloween decorations?
Autumn is here! In October, we take advantage of rainy weekends to stay at home and prepare for Halloween.
If you’ve already sewn costumes for the whole family, you can get started on decorations, cute and spooky, to get the house ready for October 31st.
Felt decorations
Felt is perfect for making decorations, whether for Valentine’s Day, Christmas or Halloween. It’s easy to find, online or in fabric stores, and comes in all sorts of colors.
For the period we’re interested in, we’d rather choose orange, green, white, black or red felt… This can be sewn by hand or machine, and can be easily embroidered to add detail.
To make a decoration, simply cut the shape you want (a ghost, a spider, a pumpkin) from two pieces of fabric of the same size, place a little stuffing between them and sew them together wrong sides together. You can leave the seams visible and embroider a wide scallop stitch all around the decoration for a beautiful finish.
If you’re in need of inspiration, Fun Cloth Crafts has put together a few ideas for felted projects, some easier than others.
Pumpkins for all over the place
More durable than real pumpkins carved with a knife, fabric pumpkins can be kept for several weeks as decorations. To make them, you can buy orange fabric, Halloween-themed fabric (with witches, spiders…) or recycle your fall-colored fabric scraps. You’ll also need padding and a bit of brown felt to make the stalk (a piece of wool or cotton sheet stiffened with fusible interfacing will also do the trick).
Our photo and video step-by-step instructions will help you make decorative pumpkins for Halloween, which can then be used as pin-holders.
Coasters
If you’d like to decorate your table for a Halloween dinner or tea party, you can make coasters. It’s a quick and easy project that can easily be done with children. The key is to choose suitable shapes: a witch’s hat, a large spider, a pumpkin, a cat’s head… You can ask the children to draw them according to their imagination. Then cut them from two layers of fabric (preferably cotton, so that it won’t be damaged by heat). Heat-seal one of the pieces. Sew them together, right sides together, leaving an opening of three or four centimetres, then turn over and close the shape with an invisible seam. You can then draw (with a textile felt-tip pen) or embroider small details.
For a quick and easy version, you can also follow the free Ma petite mercerie template.
Cushions to decorate the living room or children’s bedroom
If you really love Halloween, you can make cushions for the season, which you can reuse every year as autumn approaches.
For a quick and easy project, you can invest in themed fabric, very easy to find in specialty stores, depicting ghosts and other pumpkins. You then cut two squares of the desired size and join them right sides together, one centimeter from the edge. As with the coasters, you leave a few centimetres so that you can turn the cushion inside out and fill it with stuffing, then close the whole thing with a pretty invisible seam.
If you have more time and are looking for an original result, you can take inspiration from the two very cute cushions on the Polka dot chair website, which suggest sewing a cat face and a pumpkin head using the appliqué technique.
Candy baskets
Sewing little themed baskets is a great way to decorate your home: you can place them all over the place and store other decorations or sweets in them, just right for the season!
You can follow the Miss Cactus pattern , which can also be used to sew bags for children to bring along on October 31 for the famous trick or treat.
To make the baskets evocative of Halloween, you can use a fabric reminiscent of the period, or use the appliqué technique and add shapes using felt.
Do you celebrate Halloween? And if so, do you like to make decorations for your home?
