One Last Halloween Decoration

    I've been waiting a couple of months to make this witch hat.  I found this tutorial back in the beginning of August, but I had to wait to make it because dear daughter wanted to make one too.  We had to coordinate our fabric buying trip and our sewing day.  We finally got the hats made today.  I love this project.  It was really simple to make  and lots of fun to decorate.  I used the tutorial you find HERE.

    Here is the hat I made.

More Pumpkins, This Time It's Fabric

    I need a fall table runner, nothing fancy, just a little something on the table that says fall.  I was hoping I could find fabric for the entire thing in my stash and I did.  I have at least a couple of yards of the orange fabric, perfect for the pumpkins, backing and binding.  The purple and green are the canvas I have leftover from making bags with my souvenir fabric from Hawaii.

    There are loads of free pumpkin block patterns out there.  Here's how I made the pumpkin.  The orange fabric is cut 10" square, the snowball corners are 3" squares, the stem is a 1.5" wide by 3" piece and the purple sashing is 3" wide by however long each side needs to be.  The bottom sashing was trimmed down to a narrower width to accommodate the length of a side piece.  Easy.

   Here's a picture of my first pumpkin block.  I know my piecing could be neater and more uniform, but I don't care.  I will make two more of these to finish this table runner.  I love this project.

A Few Little Fall Decorations

I went into the Dollar Tree the other day to look for Halloween decorations.  Someone I know is going to make their own Harry Potter Wizard Wand using a Youtube tutorial.  The person doing the tutorial used some skeleton decorations that you can find at Dollar Tree and I had to get some of those exact skeletons.   Here is a link to the wand tutorial.  It's a really good tutorial and lots of fun to watch.

While I was in the Dollar Tree I took some time to look for Halloween and Fall greeting cards to frame.  I ended up picking up three cards,  the Home Sweet Home card and the Happy Thanksgiving card were inexpensive and look great in a frame.  These cards were $.50 each and the frames were cheap frames I found at Walmart.

This pumpkin is a free image I found on the internet.  I printed it on regular copy paper, cut it out and  placed some burlap looking scrap book paper (on sale at Hobby Lobby for $.29 a sheet) behind it.  I set it in a 8 x 10 clip frame.  I'm not crazy about the frame and I will probably re-frame this at some point, but I love this.

The one Halloween card that they had that I like is this one.  I painted a wood plaque with purple paint and decoupaged it onto the plaque.  I already had the paint and the Mod Podge, the card cost me $1.00 and the plaque cost me $1.99.  I love this.

I saw a few pumpkins in Hobby Lobby over the last few weeks that are a teal/turquoise color.  I love the idea of adding that color into my fall decor so I bought a small pumpkin at JoAnn's for about $2.50 (used a coupon) and some turquoise paint which cost me $1.99, I think.  I did prime the pumpkin with a coat of white paint (which I already had) before I painted it blue.  Love this.

I also found a beautiful Youtube tutorial on painted pumpkins.  She does such a good job layering paint and she tells you exactly how to do it.  Someday I want to try to make the silver leaf pumpkin.  Here is the link:  Simply Handmade Pumpkin Painting Tutorial

One more project that I will be taking care of is cleaning out my old hand sewing needles.  I have some hand sewing needles that have eyes that are too small for a wire threader to fit in.  At my age, I don't need needles with eyes that small.  I will be donating them to my dear daughter.

The Making Of A Banner (Without Buying An Expensive Cutting Machine)

    I thought about buying a Cricut or a Brother Scan and Cut last week.  I felt the need to make myself a banner saying "Happy Fall Y'all" to hang in my living room.  I thought that the only way I could make a beautiful banner would be to use a fancy expensive cutting machine and the machines I was looking at cost over $200.00 each.  The letters on the banner are in the wrong order.  They have to be fixed.  I misspelled Y'all.  It's easy to fix and I will do it after I take it down before I put it away. 

    I was in Hobby Lobby yesterday and I figured out a different way.  The best part is that I only spent about $10.00 for stencils and burlap ribbon.  I had the fabric, the stabilizer, the thread, the twine, and the magic marker.  This was fun to make and I love it.

    Here is a close up of the flags.

    I cut the flags from the fabric, then ironed them to stabilizer,and I sewed around the edges of each flag to hold them together.  I doubled up the burlap, and sewed the two layers together along the long edges.  I drew circles using a small plastic cup and a black Sharpie.  I sewed around each circle to keep the two pieces together, cut them out, then I used a stencil and a magic marker to make each letter.  I sewed each letter to a flag.  I attached the flags to a two pieces of twine using the sewing machine and it's done.  It took me about five hours to make from first cut to last stitch.  

Aqua

   I sewed up some hanging dishtowels using some of the pretty fat quarters from the Riley Blake Bake Sale fabric collection.  These three hanging dishtowels are going to live with dear daughter.

   I love these patterned buttons.  So cute.

 






   

Wild Christmas Pillow Cover

    I made myself a bright and wild red and green Christmas pillow cover.  I love it.  I found the fabrics on Etsy and I used the quilted pillow cover tutorial here.