corey marie ♥ com » “Count-down to Trick-or-Treat” Halloween Banner Tutorial!:

I’m so excited for Halloween this year. Jonah has already been noticing all of the pumpkins in the store, and has already decided on a costume: Beaver Boy from Peep and the Big Wide World:

Jonah is also really excited about this whole “Trick or Treat” idea. We have a great neighborhood for it, and I think it’s going to be really fun. Halloween also starts the “Holiday Entertaining Season” for me, and I get to decorate and bake and throw parties – Hooray!

I made this “Halloween Count-Down Calendar” yesterday, so now we’re literally counting down the days until Trick-or-Treating!

Here’s a tutorial! It’s really easy, and probably could be done from start to finish in 2 – 3 hours.

Supplies:

Burlap
Heat-N-Bond Iron-on Adhesive. (I love this stuff.)
Thin Natural Canvas (I got mine in the utility section at Joann’s for $3.99 a yard regular price.)
jute
a stick (from outside.)
safety pins or T-pins
fabric pen
sewing machine (or hand-sewing-skills)
scissors
iron & ironing board

Ok, so the first step is to make a burlap/canvas hybrid super-fabric. That’s what the iron-on adhesive is for. I made a piece of super-fabric that was 17 inches by maybe 3/4 yard, because I wanted to use it for other projects, too. If you were ONLY doing this project, I would say you could get away with a piece about 12” x 24”.

Whatever size you want to make, you’ll need three pieces, all the same size of the burlap, the iron-on adhesive, and the canvas. Place the burlap on the “sticky” side of the iron-on adhesive, paper side closest to you. (Note: Burlap doesn’t have “right” or “wrong” sides, but if your fabric did, you’d want the “right” side out.) Now put it on your ironing board burlap down, paper on top and iron away. Take your time.

When you’re done, let it cool for a moment, then peel the paper backing away.

Put your canvas on the new sticky side and iron some more. (Again, the canvas I’m using doesn’t have a “right” side, but obviously you’d want “right” side out here.)

Now you’re going to want to cut 31 squares, roughly 2.5” square. De-emphasis on the word square. Don’t measure, just eyeball it. They should be a little wonky.

Cut out seven strips, roughly 2.5” x 12.5”, then cut each one into 1/5s. On the last strip, only make one cut, you have have the remaining 2.5” x 10” piece.

I laid my pieces out, and mixed them up a little, rotating some, until I was happy with the layout.

Write numbers 1 –31 on the squares with the fabric pen. It’d also be really cool to embroider the numbers on the pieces. The pen should write on the burlap nicely and dry immediately. I used a black FabricMate with a chisel tip. On the last piece, I wrote “Trick-or-Treat”, you could also write “Happy Halloween” or put some pumpkins here.

Now cut a piece of canvas that is roughly 15” x 30”. I didn’t remove the selvage.

Starting with the bottom row, pin your pockets onto the canvas. They should be about an inch above the bottom. Now sew the left, bottom and right sides, leaving the top open. If using a sewing machine, make sure you reinforce the stitches at the top of each side. I stitched messily with black thread to keep the theme.

When you finish that row, remove the pins, and repeat with the second row, leaving about 1/2” space between rows. And so on until they’re done. This seemed a little daunting but actually went pretty fast.

As you get further up, you may want to use binder clips to roll up the edges, especially if you’re machine sewing.

Ta-da! I told you it wouldn’t take that long.

Now just fold over the rest of the fabric at the top, and stitch across. I sewed many times over and then added zigzags over top to make it Halloween-y. I also added some random zig-zag accents on the number blocks in a few places.