How to Make a No Sew Bat Curtain

Last week I wrote about carving Jank O’Lanterns and roasting pumpkins seeds. I started to make a scarecrow last week as well, but I still have not finished him. You can check back for that post. I am hoping to post it on Friday. On Sunday (October 14, 2012) I finally put up some more decorations.

The first was this curtain. I got the idea in the Best of Martha Stewart Halloween Handbook from 2010. Last year, I decided to make the curtain.  She used birds, but I decided to put bats on it instead. I used a lace curtain that I already had in the basement. It was one of the ones that the original owner left here. I thought that the lace worked well for this project, but you could also use a sheer curtain. The black material was an old t shirt that was ready to be recycled. I drew the bats on the black material free hand, but you could use a stencil if you would like. There are printable silhouettes online that  you can use.  I used an iron on adhesive paper similar to this. I made the mistake of cutting out the bat first. It is better to iron it onto the paper and then cut it out. After that you will iron it onto the curtain. This requires no sewing, but you could skip the adhesive paper and sew the bats directly to the curtain. Sewing would work better with a sheer curtain. It would be difficult to sew the bat onto lace.

One thing that I wish I had done would have been to take some measurements of the window, so that the bats would look better from the outside. Below, you can see the picture of how the curtain looks from the other side of the window. The bats are not positioned well. Especially, this year with the addition of the blinds.

I did not attach the last bat to the curtain. I decided to put him on this lamp instead. The lamp shade is cloth, so I just used straight pins to attach him. He is very easy to take off at the end of the month for storage.

I bought this spider last year at Joann Fabric. My black cat was fascinated by him as you can see. I try to buy one decoration each year to slowly build my collection. I always purchase after the holiday when everything is on sale unless it is something that I need for my costume that year.

The mechanical rat in the trap came from CVS two years ago. He has a motion detector, so that when someone walks by him his eyes glow red, and he starts to wiggle and scream.

The first time that he made his noise, both Kahlua and Cream came running. Kahlua ran right back to the bedroom once she realized what was making that awful noise. Crème was a little braver. She inched toward him until he went off again. Then she ran away.

Slowly but surely my Halloween decorations are coming out. Stay tuned for the next addition. What are you doing? I need more ideas!

Happy Homemaking and Happy Halloween!