Sewing Halloween decorations for a spooky home

Autumn is setting in and Halloween is just around the corner. It’s the perfect time to get out your orange and black fabrics, your favorite horror movies and sew decorations inspired by this North American holiday (which, by the way, was originally a Celtic festival).

If you’d like to get out your sewing machine and whip up some spooky decorations, follow our advice!

Spider webs, pumpkins and insects

Halloween means spider webs and insects of all kinds!

You can buy ready-made spider web on the Internet or in masquerade costume stores, lay it out all over the place and nestle little plastic spiders in it.
But it’s also possible to conjure them up in sewing with white thread and a little imagination.

To make placemats or hanging decorations, for example, you can use felt, which is always very practical for this kind of project: it doesn’t fray and is easy to sew or glue.

You can cut the shape of your choice (round or rectangular, depending on what you’re going to do with your canvas afterwards) from thick black felt, and cut thin strips of white felt to glue and sew into a tangle of horizontal and vertical lines. Look on the Internet for a shape like this for inspiration.

You can have similar fun cutting out a felt skeleton and assembling the limbs to the body with brads.

You can also take a large piece of black cotton (or use an old black-dyed sheet) and sew the shape of the spider’s web with your machine.

To do this, you can first trace it with white chalk. Once covered with white threads, your sheet can be used as a base for a cushion, a plaid or simply displayed in a strategic place in the house.

Hang a few plastic spiders on it for added realism!

If you feel like embroidering by hand, you can use a simple pattern and embroider with DMC phosphorescent thread (E940) for a more spectacular result.

A little bat

Spiders aren’t the only worrying creatures: why not sew a bat with satin fabric (for lining, for example)?

Simply machine or hand assemble two small rectangles of fabric (approx. 8 cm by 3 cm) right sides together, leaving an opening, then turn the whole thing inside out, slip in a little stuffing fiber and close the opening with an invisible stitch. Wings are then cut and attached to the body. You can even attach each side of the wings to paperclips or other metal structures for a better hold.

The black satin fabric can then be used to make napkins for a Halloween party, or a tablecloth embroidered with spider webs.

A haunted house

To give the impression of an abandoned house, as in the most disturbing films, you can reuse old white sheets, hem them on each side and cover the sofas and other furniture in the house with them. Haunted house effect guaranteed!

Decorations for the garden

The garden is a key element in Halloween decorating, and the first thing people see when they arrive at your home.

If you want to scare the neighbors (or make them laugh), you can make little ghosts to hang in your trees. As explained above, don’t hesitate to use old white sheets to give them a second life – or rather, a second death!

Cut a square of white fabric and hem it all around. On the front of one side, embroider a face with two eyes and an O-shaped mouth. You can then attach it to a round or oval structure: a Christmas bauble no longer in use, a plastic Easter egg…

If you’re using a bauble, you can reuse the fastener by making a small hole in the exact center of your fabric to slide the fastener through.

Perhaps you don’t have a sheet and prefer to invest in fabric. Choose a waterproof and/or robust fabric: thick linen, coated cotton (hard to find in plain white), gabardine…

If you’ve got a plastic skeleton in your cupboard (you never know) or fancy buying one from a joke store, you can set it up in your garden or home and sew him clothes from leftover fabric or recycled discarded clothes.

A great way to have fun with your sewing machine!

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What about you? Do you celebrate Halloween? Are you planning to sew costumes or decorations?