Felt Dot Garland

Hello Doodles and Doilies readers! Thank you so much, Erica, for having me today. I am so excited to be here. My name is Sarah and you can find me at Creating Sarah. I started my blog earlier this year because I am a list maker. I realized I had lists and lists of things I wanted to do someday. (You should see my Projects to Do board on Pinterest...it's ridiculous!) I realized I was planning more than I was doing, so I started my blog so I would have a place to put the things I was finally doing. By no stretch of the imagination am I a professional, and I run with a lot of trial and error, but I sure have had a lot of fun and, best of all, I am really enjoying the friendships that are developing. I'd love to have you stop by and visit!

Right now, though, let me show you what I have brought today:

I have been trying this month to build up my Halloween decorations supply. I made a really fun and easy Felt Dot Garland, and it looks great, but it needed some spookifying.

Here's what I did:

I added some haunts to the garland.

Here's how I made them:

The first thing I did was find a circle cookie cutter and trace out 3 circles. Then I sketched out the faces that I wanted.

I'm going to focus just on the ghost for the sake of space. Hopefully, that will give you the basics enough to run with it, but if you need help or advice, please feel free to contact me!

Once you have your sketch/idea in mind, move on to some felt.

Trace out and cut 2 circles.

Using the sketch, cut out the features for the face.

This was the mouth for my ghost.

Please ignore my chipping nail polish. It was late at night and I really wanted to finish this. I figured it was better to have unfinished nails than an unfinished ghost. I hope you'll understand. =)

Now, using black embroidery thread and a running stitch, I sewed that mouth into place on one of the circles.

On the second circle, I drew the letters. BOO!

Then, with the black thread, I embroidered those letters.

Now, it is time to create the ghost.

I grabbed some purple ribbon to hang it with. Place it on one of the circles in the position you like and pin it (take a lesson from me, pin on the right side so you don't lose your pin).

I also grabbed a scrap of tulle, folded it up into a kind of a messy gather and pinned that in as well.

To sew the two pieces together, I used white thread and a running stitch again, being careful to keep my knots on the inside. I was also very careful to make sure that my thread caught the ribbon and tulle to hold it in place.

Before you close it up, stuff it just a little with some fiberfill...

which, by the way, was pretty much impossible for me to get a good picture of with my little camera. You get the idea, though, right?

Finish sewing it up and, *bing*, you're done.

He's kind of cute!

For a ghost.

The possibilities are endless. You can use any design you want!

Here's my jack o'lantern:

And the witch:

These could even work at Thanksgiving (how cute would a turkey be?) or Christmas (reindeer?)

What would you make?