mama urchin

I know Halloween isn’t a traditionally garland-laden season but for some reason we’ve been feeling garland-y around here. The first one is on the mantle in the family room and is from mailorder #4 from Amy. I want to try to make a stiff spider web from black crochet thread to put behind that little Boo! hanging down there on the right. Any ideas?

Garland #2 was made with Katie. She helped me stamp all those little guys on white paper and punch out the scallop-y colored things to put them on. We added googley eyes to the ones that had eyes that seemed big enough. I cut around the stamped images — a circle punch would make this much easier — and then we glued them onto the colored scallop pieces. Both this garland and the first one are strung together on black crochet thread. The individual pieces are just taped to the thread.

The last garland is the best, if you ask me. I love how cute this turned out. Really, really, love it. I just drew the pumpkin, star, and bat freehand. The spider is a circle. You are welcome to print and use my pattern pieces. The pumpkin, star, and bat were made by pinning the pattern to two pieces of felt and then sewing around the pattern with the machine, you could do this by hand too. Then you cut around your stitches trying to keep the allowance even. For the pumpkin I just stuck a little piece of brown felt between the two layers of orange where I wanted the stem to be before I started sewing. Make the stem longer than you think — you can always trim it later, just don’t trim it off when you’re trimming around the pumpkin shape. The ribs on the pumpkin were sewn on the machine too.

The spider is made in a similar fashion. Put a black piece of felt and whatever you want his underside to be made of — ours has a purple check underside — right sides together with the circle pattern on top. Cut eight black pieces for legs — once again longer than you think — and put them in between the layers with the legs extending into the middle. The felt pieces stick to each other so this helps keep the legs where you want them. Then, starting near a leg, sew around the circle making sure you catch all eight legs and leaving a small space to turn the spider right side out. I stuffed him with a little polyfil and then machine-sewed around the whole thing to secure the hole shut.

The yo-yos were made using a circle slightly bigger than the spider pattern. If you wanted your garland to be longer you could make bigger yo-yos — trace a cd or a bowl for a pattern –or just more yo-yos. My garland has 16, four each of four fabrics. To hang it I just attached a tab from a soda can to each end a-la Calamity Kim. The spider is hanging off the tab on the star. If you make one let me know so I can check it out! We already have a Thanksgiving garland in the works too. We’ll share that in the beginning of November.