Abakhan at Halloween

Hi, I’m Fiona and I blog at Celtic Thistle Stitches. I was delighted when Lynne told me that she had picked my entry for the Halloween Abakhan Fabrics Project on a Budget. I am lucky enough to have an Abakhan store at the end of my road here in Latvia, so to be given the opportunity to spend the equivalent of £20 there for free was doubly delightful. The shop is a real treasure trove and one I never leave empty-handed! My thanks to Will and Kristin at Abakhan for making all the arrangements that enabled me to spend the voucher in store in Latvia, and to Lynne for hosting this post.

My suggestion for the Halloween project was Halloween Bunting. It is a quick and easy project to do and one that the family can get involved in too by drawing or tracing the Halloween shapes and letters and making the spider webs with fabric paint.

For your Halloween Bunting you will need:

1m black cotton fabric  (you will have enough to make more than the 11 flags if you wish to)

0.25m orange cotton sheeting 

6m Orange/ Black Spider Pattern ribbon (you will have enough to make longer bunting if you wish to)

2 squares black felt

2 squares white felt

Glow in the Dark fabric paint – lime green and orange

Black and Fluorescent Effects embroidery floss  

Double-sided fusible web

All of the above were purchased in store and are available online from Abakhan apart from the Fluorescent effect embroidery floss which I already had.

Cutting

Cut 4 orange 3” hexagons and 18 black 3” hexagons.

I used an Easy Hexagon ruler to measure and cut out the hexagons, but you can make your own template by drawing a 6” line and with a compass draw three 3” circles along the line centring them on each end of the line and the mid-point. Draw lines between the points where the circles intersect to make your hexagon. Don’t forget to add a 0.25” seam allowance when cutting out the fabric.

Making the flags

Pin wrong sides together the 4 orange hexagons to 4 black hexagons and repeat with the remaining 14 black hexagons in pairs leaving the one edge on every hexagon unpinned. Stitch the pinned sides with a 0.25” seam, starting and stopping 0.25” from the open edge. Clip the corners and turn each hexagon pair right side out through the open side. Use a pencil or similar to push out the points of the hexagons. Turn under 0.25” on the open top edges and topstitch to close the hexagon. Press. You will now have 7 black and 4 black/orange hexagon flags.

Adding the motifs

Draw/trace one B, two O’s, two ghosts, two bats and two witches hats onto the fusible web. Templates for the letters are available here .I drew the ghosts, bats and hats freehand but this site also has stencils available for these too. Roughly cut out the letters and ghosts and iron to the reverse of the white felt squares. Repeat for the bats and witches hats with the black felt. Cut out the shapes on the outlines. Position the white felt B centrally on the front of a black hexagon pair. Remove the paper backing when you are happy with the position and iron to fuse. Outline the letter with a hand blanket stitch using the fluorescent embroidery thread. Repeat for the remaining letters and ghosts.

Fuse the black hats and bats to the orange hexagon flags and machine blanket stitch with black thread.

 

Using the green fabric paint mark two eyes on each bat and use the orange fabric paint to mark a band on the witches hats. With the black embroidery thread stitch French knots for the eyes of the ghosts.

On the remaining two black hexagon flags mark out with chalk or an erasable marker spider’s webs and outline with the fabric paint or stitch with a running stitch with the fluorescent thread. If you are using fabric paint you will need to let the spiders webs dry before going on to the next step.

Attaching the ribbon

Turn under 0.25” twice at the end of the ribbon and then turn this under 1” Pin and stitch to hem the ribbon and make a loop for hanging. Measure 20” from the stitched end of the ribbon. Stitch the top edge of a bat hexagon flag with a 0.25” seam to the bottom edge of the ribbon. Measure 6” from the widest point of the bat hexagon flag and repeat the stitching with a spider’s web hexagon flag. Repeat with these measurements alternating the hexagon flags in the following order from the beginning bat, web, ghost, hat, B, O, O, bat, ghost, web, hat.

Hang the bunting and wait for darkness to fall! 

I would love to see what you do with this bunting so pop by Celtic Thistle Stitches and let me know what you have made. The theme for this month's Project on a Budget is "Winter Warmers", I am looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!