Halloween Table Runner

In my post last Friday I said it was time to move into Halloween mode, so here we go. We finally have new dining room chairs (more on that next time) to go with our new table we bought back in January. I was standing in the dining room drooling over admiring my new furniture when I decided that it needed something festive. With my husband watching football in the living room with the girls, I was free to actually make something in the middle of the day instead of beginning a project when I should be going to bed. Yippee! Here's what I made...

It's a Halloween table runner. I tend to like decorations that celebrate the spirit of Halloween without being too Halloweeny. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I didn't buy novelty Halloween fabrics with pumpkins and bats and candy corn and all that good stuff... I just used black and white fabrics and added my own orange pumpkins.

The little pumpkins came from this pillow post at Ameroonie Designs. Aren't they adorable?! She has great instructions on how to make them. As soon as I saw them, I knew I had to use them on something.

I used a 45" x 12" piece of linen, five different 12" x 3½" strips of black and white fabric, 24" of ric rac, and scraps of orange felt and orange fabric. I took the black and white strips of fabric and pressed the long edges in a ¼", then topstitched them onto the linen. Then I sewed a 12" piece of ric rac to each end of the linen. I flipped the linen over and pressed in all edges about ½", mitering the corners. I then sewed around the outside edge of the linen. You could stop there and have a really nice, simple table runner, but I added the pumpkins for a little pop of color... and you need orange for Halloween, right?

This was such a simple and quick project, and I love the way it looks on the table.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I have another Halloween sewing project sketched out in my notebook, so be on the look out for that soon.