Halloween Throw Pillow

Boo… Soon it will be Halloween!!! October is the month that packed with the fun of disguise and dress-up to become the iconic character, be it for trick-or-treat and/or for attending Halloween party, I simply love the spooky activities of the Halloween 🙂 This year, I have added another Halloween decoration to my Halloween collection – a Halloween Throw Pillow.

Halloween Throw Pillow is quick and easy to make since it is using bleach stenciling plus painting. For your convenience, I have prepared the downloadable and printable stencil pattern, all you need is to print it out on the freezer papers, cut out, stick on with warm iron, bleach, and paint. You can use a black cotton dish towel or black pillow cover.

If you are interested in the Mr. and Mrs. Skeleton next to the Halloween throw pillow, you may find the tutorial in this post. You may also find the previous years’ Halloween projects and tutorials, here.

Need more inspiration on making a costume for your kids instead of buying them from the shop? you may find them at: How to Make Your Own Halloween Costumes: 9 DIY Halloween Costumes eBook from All Free Sewing.

Halloween Throw Pillow

Download: Halloween Throw Pillow pdf stencil pattern

Material:
1. Black dishtowel or tea towel (20″ x 28″) or black pillow cover
2. Freezer paper, cut 2 sheets of 8 1/2″ x 14″
3. Bleach or any better chemical that can do the job equivalently
4. Fabric paint or acrylic paint (add fabric medium), yellow and red

Tools:
1. Printer (inkjet, or bubble-jet, or dot matrix, but not laser printer)
2. Craft knife
3. Ruler
4. Cutting Mat
5. Iron
6. Sponge applicator
7. Paintbrush
8. Paint palette plate or a shallow container
9. Cardboard as backing to prevent bleach and paint from penetrating to the back of the fabric
10. Some kitchen paper towels and a piece of unwanted clean fabric
11. Gloves and safety goggles

Warning: Do this at a well-ventilated room or at outdoor. Wear gloves, safety goggles, and old clothes or apron.

Remark: you may use a spray bottle to spray the bleach solution on, but make sure to cover the dishtowel with more freezer paper so that you won’t accidentally bleach the other places.

Prepare the materials and tools needed as listed above.
Cut the freezer paper to 8 1/2″ x 14″ size, 2 pieces.
Download the Halloween Throw Pillow pdf stencil pattern.

Feed the paper into your printer, with printing on the non-shinning side of the freezer paper. If the freezer papers curled up and it is hard to feed in into the printer, tape the feeding end to a normal letter size paper to make it a little thicker and stable.

Set your printer to print 8 1/2″ x 14″ paper, no scaling.
Print 1 page at a time.
As your printer could be different from mine, adjust accordingly. Test the printer setting on normal paper before the actual printing on the freezer paper.
(Click on the image to see a larger picture of my printing setting)

Cut the printed freezer paper according to the Halloween Throw Pillow stencil pattern.

The bats and pumpkins are detached from the freezer paper, remember their positions or refer back to the pattern page.
Cut 2 strips for the rope to hang the pumpkins.

Position the freezer paper stencil at the center of the black dish towel or tea towel. With the shiny side down.
Set the iron to medium heat, pressed it on the stencil.
The freezer paper stencil will adhere to the dish towel.
Make sure the borders are all stick well to the towel.

Add the hanging rope of the pumpkin and also the “Trick” and “Treat” text on the side of the center stencil.

Pour a small amount of bleach into a small container, say about 1/10 of the container.
Dilute the bleach with water, the amount determines how fast the bleaching takes place and how much harm it did to the fiber. The less water added in, the bleaching will take place faster but it will damage the fiber more. The more water will make the processes slower and thus hopefully less damage is done.
I have tested out, dilute it with 4 parts of water is just nice but it will take a few minutes to make the black into very light grey, not white.

These are the 3 dots I have tried. One with undiluted bleach, one with 1:2 dilution and one with 1:4 dilution. See any difference? The end result is the same in terms of color tone.

Place cardboard at the back of the dishtowel to prevent bleach and paint from penetrating to the back.
Dab the stencil with bleach solution by using a sponge applicator.

Wait for the bleach to whiten the black dish towel.
If you find that there are some uneven spots, dab more bleach solution on it and wait.
Don’t worry about the wet freezer paper, the bleach won’t get through since it has plastic coating at the back.

Remove the freezer by peeling it off from the dishtowel when the desired bleached color has achieved.

Rinse the bleached dish towel with running water and remove the rest of the smaller pieces of freezer paper.
Hang to dry or iron it dry.

Prepare the fabric paint or acrylic paint with added fabric medium, red and yellow.

Pour yellow into the container then add a small amount of red, to make it slightly orange.
Paint the bleached area with this color.
When the paint is wet, it will appear dull and dark, but when it is dry, the color will be brighter.
Add more coat if necessary but wait for it to dry between coats.

Add a little more red to the paint, tone the Halloween moon stencil with stronger orange. Again, repeat the coat if necessary.
Leave it to dry.

Place a piece of clean fabric on the fabric paint, iron it with warm heat to fix the color.

Fold the dishtowel at the wrong wise, with 12″ length at the side and approx. 2″ overlapping at the middle.
Sew side seam.
Or, you can make a no-sew version of Halloween throw pillow by following my previous tutorial on “No-Sew Tea Towel Pillow”.