Halloween felt appliqué Trick or treat bag or tote By Terry Kuntz
You will need half a yard of a base fabric for your tote, I used a light
canvas. For the felt front, I purchased felt by the yard. I got half a
yard of pumpkin orange and half a yard of brown and a quarter yard of
green. For the handles get a yard of strapping or just do fabric handles,
you also need half a yard of something fun for lining the tote if you
want to line it.
Applique' designs by
Sew Weird Designs
http://www.sewwweird.com
Puffy 3D
Halloween
The first picture is of your 13” square of felt and interfacing or stabilizer of your choice.
Next you take your brown felt, roughly cut it to the size of your square, take chalk and sketch a chunky tree. Take your time. You can always scratch out your sketching lines. When you have a tree you like, cut it out and fit it to the orange square.
Next take your piece of green felt and sketch a green grassy hill, this will be going behind the tree, see how it will look then when you have something you like, cut it out.
Fit
your scene on the square and pin it down. For the Halloween appliqués that will go on this scene, I did Juli’s puffy Halloween appliqués on heavy tear away instead of fabric, tore the tear away off leaving it behind the appliqués for stability. I needed to clip off some of the strands of tear away carefully around the appliqués. You will see the white tear away on the edges so take a sharpie or other marker and cover your edges, makes the final product look better. The face on the pumpkin is just scraps of felt, you will be sewing them on or glue them on, your choice. I used a sparkly felt for the ghost and day glow threads for the details on all the appliqués
Sew it all on with your regular sewing machine. The next picture shows the front sewn together and the FUN lining I used.
The next thing you need to do is cut out your main bag fabric, I used black light weight canvas but any fabric with some body to it will do fine. Make sure you include a seam allowance on the side, and bottom. You need a 2” turn down on the top part. Next fold the fabric on half, mark your center fold and your 2” top header. Fold the header down. Take your strapping or what ever you’re using for your handles, figure out how long you want them, pin them on where you want them and sew them on. I trimmed all around the decorated felt front edge with a pinking sheers for a decorative edge. Now pin the decorated felt front on to the front part of the canvas bag making sure the top edge of the felt front is at the top edge of the fold of your header. Sew it on all around with your regular sewing machine. Now fold your bag back over the now sewn on felt front, and sew around the side edge and bottom.
I did a box pleat on the bottom of mine as shown in the final pictures.
Next, you measure your lining and make it’s the same size as your bag
making sure you have a 2 inch header at the top. I sewed up the side and
the bottom, turned down the 2” header, pinned it into the decorated bag
and sewed the 2 together around the top. You now have one unique tote
or trick or treat bag. Enjoy