burlap halloween banner {tutorial}

More last minute Halloween DIY decor! I saw the cutest burlap Halloween banner in the Pottery Barn catalog recently, but it's no longer available. So what are you going to do? Make it yourself, of course!

I decided to stencil the letters on burlap for an aged look. I used the same method as I showed on my burlap wedding banner with a few additions.

Burlap Halloween Banner Tutorial

Supplies:

Burlap
Scissors
Freezer paper
Iron
Black fabric or acrylic paint
Foam brush
Jute
Sewing machine and thread
Ribbons and trim

Start by measuring your space to see how wide your pennants need to be, then subtract a few inches for spacing. Divide the measurement by how many letters you need (I'll save you counting on your fingers--you need 14 to spell Happy Halloween). My pieces came out to be 5" wide by 8" tall. I made mine about 1/2" taller than I wanted the end result to be so I could fold them over to sew them on the twine.

I created my stencils in my Silhouette software. I used the Old English Text MT font, which is one of the standard Microsoft fonts (meaning you may already have it on your computer!), or you can find it for free here. I added a couple of spiders from my Silhouette image library as well. Cut the stencils out of freezer paper with the shiny side down (if you don't have a cutting machine, print them in Word and cut them with an Exacto knife). 

Cut your burlap pennants using my handy little burlap cutting trick here. Cut the freezer paper stencils the same size as the burlap and iron the shiny side to the front of the burlap pieces (more info in this post). It just takes one quick pass of the iron. Now you're ready to stencil.

I used Silhouette's Fabric Ink in black and a foam brush to stencil the letters, but acrylic paint would work just as well. Load your brush with paint and pounce it on the burlap to give it a distressed look.

When most of the paint is used up, lightly brush around the edges of pennant for an aged effect. Repeat for all letters.



Carefully peel the freezer paper off the burlap.

Iron pennant pieces to set fabric ink (optional, but great if you want to set the ink so it won't be faded by the sun).

To assemble the banner, measure a length of black jute and add a little extra on the ends to hang it.

Fold each pennant over the jute and sew the fold down using a zig-zag stitch.

 

In the space between the words tie black and orange ribbons and trims like on my mini "Boo" burlap banner.




This is probably my favorite piece of Halloween decor in my house. Thanks to PB for the inspiration!