Halloween!

This is the second year I'm doing a little Halloween "advent calendar" for the nieces. Last year I made a large panel with pockets on it, so I'm reusing it again this year. There's no candy in it, so each day has a little treat like halloween stickers, or socks from the Target dollar bin, or a little something that I made. Here's a peek at a few of the things in it.



A green teddy bear from a free download pattern on Burda



A black 18" doll jacket from Simplicity 3551 for one of the dolls. (This was hard to fit in. I made the pockets way too small!)




A barrette I made from a dollar store barrette, some ribbon, and a bit of jewelry wire.



A small headband for Ana



Wooden magnets- I bought some halloween shapes at michaels, painted them, and used wood glue to attach magnets to the back. These were very popular last year, so I made sure to include a bunch.

And so here it is, stuffed to the brim. I'm sure they're going to rummage ahead- the odds that the little green teddybear stays in his pocket until the 26th are pretty slim.




I made this a year ago, so I have no pictures of the construction, but it was pretty straightforward.

I started with 2 pieces of flannel about 1.5 feet across and maybe 2.5 feet long. I stitched them together, right side out, and zig zagged the edges. You could be fancy and sew it right sides together, then flip it out, to make clean edges.

The hanging strap is a ribbon, zigzagged to the upper corners. I just eyeballed the length... my sister hangs this over a wooden plaque that's on her kitchen wall, so I just made it long enough to slide over that and hang down.

To make the pockets, I cut several strips of a halloween fabric as wide as the backing panel and maybe 3 or 4 inches high. I folded in the out edges, then decided where the pocket divisions would be. I stitched on numbers using fancy stitches on my machine, or painted them on. On a few pockets, I put on appliques or stitched even smaller pockets on top. Then I attached it to the panel by sewing along the sides and the bottom. The pocket divisions were then stitched in. This is where I kind of goofed and made most of the pockets about 1 or 2 inches wide. Fine for stickers, but I would really like bigger pockets for things like holiday socks or doll clothes! Not enough to make a new panel, though.

And that's really it... I made a handful of tiny pouches to hand sew on to be a few of the day pockets, just to vary things. And of course I did manage to make the 31st pocket big enough for a good treat!



Finally, there's a little Halloween contest over on the Dabbled blog! You can head over there to see all the cute halloween items other bloggers have made.