Any excuse to embroider something, am I right?! Plus, Halloween kind of gives us permission to be a little extra playful with our crafting! So here we go with this adorably creepy and easy Halloween embroidery pattern you can download for free!
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Free Hand Embroidery Pattern
I’ve got a cute and easy Halloween embroidery for you today. The pattern is a free download, the link is at the bottom of the post. (And you don’t need to sign up for this one, just find the link and print the pattern!)
If you need more Halloween hand stitching inspiration, check out this post of 18 Free Halloween Embroidery Patterns.
This embroidery works up pretty quickly, you can finish it in an afternoon. It would be a great gift to bring to the hostess of this year’s Halloween bash! (Along with some Reece’s cups, obviously.)
Gather Materials
To make this free Halloween embroidery you’ll need:
6″ Embroidery Hoop (I like these bamboo ones.)
Spooky Fabric 8″ x 8″
Grey or Black Felt 2″ x 2″
Felt piece for backing 8″ x 8″ (any colour)
Printed Pattern (find the link at the end of the post)
Tissue Paper
Pencil
Needle
Small Scissors
Embroidery Thread – I used this sparkly white metallic (DMC E5200) for the web, dark grey for the spider and white for the words.
Light Pad (Optional)
Transferring an Embroidery Pattern
This particular project is unique because I stitched it on black fabric.
Normally, I would transfer the embroidery design directly onto the fabric. But pencil, and even pen marks are impossible to see on black fabric. So I used a different strategy.
I opted to transfer the design onto a piece of tissue paper instead and I stitched right through the paper.
I used this light pad to transfer the pattern. It’s a new tool for me but it has come in so handy for tracing and transferring embroidery patterns, I can’t believe I lived without it for so long!
The light pad is pretty affordable and totally worth it if you do pattern tracing or transferring with any regularity.
It also worked well to transfer a pattern to some fairly opaque teal and purple coloured fabrics for a different embroidery project. I was surprised that I could see through the fabric as well as I did to trace the pattern! Definitely a win!
My previous strategy was to tape my pattern to a window for transferring, you can see that technique in this post. It works perfectly well as long as it’s light outside!
And if you are using a lighter colour fabric for this spiderweb embroidery, you can totally draw the design right onto the fabric using a pencil. Just skip the tissue paper step.
Easy Halloween Embroidery
Layer your fabric and felt backing piece and place them in your embroidery hoop.
If you’re using the tissue paper method, you’re going to embroider through all the layers including the paper.
Use 2 strands of thread and a split stitch to create both the spiderweb and the words. Use tiny stitches for the words.
Here’s a pretty picture on how to do a split stitch. 🙂 It’s my favourite stitch, I always use it for text and curved lines.
Once the web and the words are all stitched, you can carefully peel away all the paper.
Use tweezers to remove any tiny bits of paper that get stuck in the stitching.
Add the Spider
Cut out one spider body out of felt.
I used grey because my fabric was black and when I tried a black felt spider, he blended into the fabric too much.
Go ahead and use whatever colour you’d like!
Use 2 strands of matching thread and a backstitch to start sewing the spider down on the web. Leave a gap in the stitching and use tweezers to adding some stuffing to the spider.
Finish sewing the spider body down.
Use 3 strands of the same grey thread to create the legs. Each leg is 2 long stitches. You can free-style this part and make the legs as long or short as you’d like. Just make sure there are 8! 🙂
You can finish the back of the hoop in whichever way you prefer.
My approach is to use small scissors to trim the felt layer down so it’s flush with the wood of the hoop.
Then I trim the fabric a bit and use hot glue to stick it down to the inside of the hoop. You can see a photo of this technique in this post.
There’s lots of ways to finish the back of an embroidery hoop. And there’s no wrong way. I may need to write a separate post on the subject… another day perhaps!
Anyway your embroidery is now finished and is looking both spooky and delightful!
It also pairs really well with this adorable bat design which you can find as part of a Halloween pattern set here!
So just click here to grab this easy Halloween embroidery pattern. Make sure you print it at 100% for it to fit in a 6″ hoop. But feel free to shrink or enlarge the pattern to suit your needs.
Happy creepy crafting!
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