Sew a Jack O’Lantern Bag with Your Kids for Halloween
This simple and cute jack-o-lantern sewing project uses a combination of easy stitches and fabric glue to create a homemade Halloween treat bag perfect for taking trick or treating. Kids of all ages will love the introduction to sewing and customizing their own fabric bag.
Make a Cute Jack o Lantern Bag for halloween
Halloween with it’s trick or treating, witches, monsters, ghouls, ghosts, and Jack O’lanterns is well-known and loved by American children, but when I was growing up in Australia, Halloween was something we only knew from films and magazines.
Seems that all these early impressions didn’t fade over the years. I’ve designed a really simple Jack O’Lantern bag that you can make together with your kids to hold their candy in when they go trick or treating.
I think they’ll enjoy sewing it with you and know they’ll enjoy filling it with goodies on Halloween.
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Supplies Needed for Jack O’Lantern Bag
- Two 8″ x 10″ rectangles of orange felt
- Two 16″ x 1 ½” ” strips of green felt
- Black felt
- Embroidery Floss
- Needle
- Pins
- Scissors
- Printable jack o’ lantern face template (see below)
- Hot glue gun (optional)
How To Sew Your Jack O’Lantern Bag
Step 1
Print out the jack o lantern template for your Jack O’lantern’s face.
Step 2
Cut the eyes, nose and mouth from the paper print-out and pin them onto to the black felt.
Trace around them and cut out of black felt.
Step 3
Pin the black felt eyes, nose and mouth onto one of the rectangles of orange felt.
Sew them into place.
You can use glue if you find this easier to do with your child.
Step 4
Take one of the green strips of felt. Pin one end about 1″ from the top left corner and the other end about 1″ from the top right corner of your orange rectangle to make a handle.
Do the same with the second green strip of felt on the top of the second orange rectangle.
Sew the ends of each handle into place. You can use glue if you find this easier to do with your child.
Step 5
Pin the two orange rectangles together making sure the Jack O’lantern’s face is on the outside.
Sew along the sides and bottom of the rectangle leaving the top open to create your bag.
Tips for Making Your Jack O’Lantern Bag
What We Learned for Next Time
I used orange for the pumpkin and black for the facial features but if you want to give the effect of a pumpkin illuminated at night you could use black felt rectangles for the bag and yellow for the face.
I also used orange embroidery floss to blend with the color of my felt but you could create a simple decorative effect by using embroidery floss that stands out against your felt making the stitches more visible.
Changing the Halloween Bag Design
Also, pumpkins come in many shades of greens, yellows, reds, grey blues and browns, so you might like to experiment with something other than orange and remember, if you don’t mind wandering away from realism, kids love choosing their own unusual and idiosyncratic color combinations.
Additional Sewing with Kids Resources
If you’re not sure how to thread a needle or sew a running stitch then check out Zenkidu for some quick links.
Sew an Easy Halloween Jack-o-Lantern Bag
This very simple sewing project is a good first sewing idea. Kids of all ages can make a jack-o-lantern bag from felt using easy stitches and glue.
Materials
- Two 8″ x 10″ rectangles of orange felt
- Two 16″ x 1 ½” ” strips of green felt
- Black felt
- Embroidery Floss
Tools
- Needle
- Pins
- Scissors
- White fabric marking pencil
- Printable jack o’ lantern face template
- Hot glue gun (optional)
Instructions
- Print out the free jack o lantern template to use to guide your pumpkin face!
- Cut out the shapes of the template and pin to the black felt.
- Cut around the pinned template pieces or trace around them and then cut them out.
- Arrange the black felt pieces on one of the orange rectangles and pin in place.
- Sew them or glue them.
- Add a handle by attaching each end of the green long rectangle pieces to the bag. Sew or glue in place.
- Pin the two orange rectangles together and sew around three sides leaving the top handled side open.
Need Costumes to Go With Your Jack O’Lantern Bag?
- We have even more homemade Halloween costumes!
- We also have 15 more Halloween boy costumes!
- Be sure to check out our list of 40+ Easy Homemade Costumes for Kids for even more homemade Halloween costume ideas!
- Looking for costumes for the whole family? We have some ideas!
- Don’t miss out on these adorable wheelchair costumes!
- This DIY Checker Board costume for kids is super cute.
- On a budget? We have a list of inexpensive Halloween costume ideas.
- We have a big list of the most popular Halloween costumes!
- How to help your child decide their Halloween costume whether it is scary like the grim reaper or an awesome LEGO.
- These are the most original Halloween costumes EVER!
- This company makes free Halloween costumes for children in wheelchairs, and they’re amazing.
- Take a look at these 30 Enchanting DIY Halloween costumes.
- Celebrate our everyday heroes with these Halloween costumes like a police officer, fireman, trash man, etc.
How did your homemade simple Halloween sewing project turn out? Did your kids love making their own trick or treat bags?
