We are getting ready for some visitors around here!
It was a bit trickier this year to figure out how to decorate our front door for Halloween. We moved in to an apartment building that is painted sherbet orange. That may sound a bit strange, but living on the coast invites people to paint buildings a wild array of colors. It’s actually a lot of fun to drive around and see all of the pastel blue, yellow and even pink houses that brighten up the scenery.
However, having an orange building with a black door made it a perfect combination for Halloween decorations. You have to let the kids know you are open for business on Halloween, right? I did have a couple of challenges. I couldn’t nail anything in the door or the walls, and I couldn’t go crazy with decorating on the ground or around the door because of restrictions put in place by the property managers. So a door decoration it is!
I made a felt garland to drape around the door and tied a cute sign to the door knocker with orange baker’s twine. I’m sure anyone walking by our building at 2 a.m. would have wondered what the heck I was doing on a step ladder hanging our decorations, but I just had to see the finished product!
The garland was a lot of fun to make, and took only about two hours to construct and sew.
- Cut assorted shapes from felt. I doubled-up on the pieces of felt when I cut out the shapes. I free-formed my shapes for the most part and made three sizes of circles and a star, but I did make paper patterns to follow when I was cutting the felt so that the shapes were somewhat uniform in size. I also used pinking shears for variety.
- Layout your felt pieces in the order you want, and make sure you vary the sizes, shapes and colors to make for an interesting pattern.
- Using a straight stitch, stitch down from the top of the felt through the middle. Near the end of the first piece of felt, add the next piece of felt right next to the bottom of first piece so that you can make one continuous stitch. This is how you create your chain.
- Back-stitch over the first piece of felt over to the next piece of felt so that you don’t have to worry about the thread breaking when you hang in your garland.
- Stitch together all pieces of your felt garland. You can stitch on ribbon or baker’s twine at the ends of the garland for a nice finish. I used orange baker’s twine (I can’t get enough of the stuff). Now you are ready to hang your Halloween garland and welcome visitors on All Hallow’s Eve!
Red Tulips 