An autumnal garland for Halloween

Combine your favourite colours and items of the season

Everyone has their own favourite thing about autumn: whether it’s foraging for berries or mushrooms, collecting conkers and acorns, gathering coloured leaves to weave into a wreath or carving the pumpkin for Halloween.

Combine your favourite colours and items of the season and craft into your own personal felt autumnal garland. You can make little felt animals such as a squirrel, an owl or a hedgehog.

For the garland you will need: scraps of felt in different colours, scissors, embroidery needle, embroidery thread, some templates cut out from card, pins, glue, string, some coloured buttons or beads.

Templates

Cut out and place the templates to the side. For the leaves, fold a piece of felt in half and pin the template to this. Cut around the template and then remove the pin. Take one side of the leaf shape and using an embroidery needle and thread, stitch on the markings of the leaf. The best way to do this is first to create a guide by sketching the markings on the template and following this pattern. Sew or glue the two pieces together. Use the same method for the pumpkin decoration, sewing on a snippet of dark green felt for the stalk.

For the mushroom, cut out the cap and the stalk on folded pieces of felt so you have two of each shape. Sew the two pieces of white felt for the stalk together. Sew little white spots onto one of the red mushroom cap felt pieces. Sew the two mushroom cap shapes together, wedging the white stalk in between.

For the horse chestnut, cut out a circle from dark green felt and snip the top of the circle to create spikes. Cut out two smaller circles from brown felt and bright green felt. Sew the brown circle onto the dark green one. Snip out spikes from the bright green circle and cut out a wedge from the centre. Sew this over the brown circle with dark green embroidery thread making little arrows for the spikes on the chestnut.

Cut a piece of string long enough to hold the decorations. The length of the string will vary, depending on how many items you are making for the garland. Space the felt decorations out evenly and then glue onto the string, threading a bead or a button in between each decoration.