Kbatz Kraft: Halloween T-Shirt Pillows and Masks

Who doesn’t love a Halloween T-shirt? But what’s one to do once your frightful favorite gets too small, stained, stretched out, or ruined? Never fear Kbatz is here to help you turn discarded October shirts into fresh Fall pillows!

1) Be brave and snip snip! Once you’ve selected your T-shirt retirees, cut off the sleeves and necklines, leaving the front and back of the shirt as your new pillow fabric. If there are out of the way soiled spots or extra bottom length, consider cutting those, too. We want to save the fun Halloween designs, so the prints we’re preserving dictate the size or shapes of the pillows. Many will be straightforward squares, but others with wide across designs can be smaller, lumbar sized pillows or a left logo becomes a memorable mini. Go with what your facade allows. Do remember though, that the pillow fabric may seem big when ironed flat, but consider how much room there will be once it is a stuffed three dimensional object. Give yourself a few inches of room or seam allowance to keep your Halloween swag centered. You don’t want any fun phrasing running off the side!

2) Turn your fabric inside out and get sewing! Your two “good sides” should face each other, pinned or basted in place with a quick stitch. Go around your material perimeter and sew three sides closed. The biggest mistake you can make here is getting carried away and sewing the whole pillow closed, but that’s totally fixable! If you are going to use a pre-made pillow form to stuff your new Halloween cover, leave the bottom completely open. If you are using other stuffing means, then you can sew the bottom partway if you desire – just leave enough for your arm to do the fillings. Matching thread works best on your final stitching, but if you need help seeing your basting stitches and want to use a zany color, well that’s fine, too. Try using pins or chalk marks if you need guidelines while you stitch. When hand sewing, a basic running stitch will suffice, the smaller the stitch the better. There is, however, no formal or right way to do it! This is just a pillow. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s okay to make mistakes. That’s no cheat, either – this is basic sewing for you and the kids to practice and have a good time. When you’ve done your three sides, turn the pillow right side out, make sure your design isn’t off the edge, unsightly, or crooked. If you have to break in a seam ripper and do a side again, that’s no problem.

3) Know your T-shirt or tool needs. T-shirt materials are often stretchy knits, so if you are sewing on a machine, check your thread, tension, or stitch, for a zig zag setting may be better on some fabrics than a straight line. If you intend to use your Halloween pillow year round or expect it to earn a lot of bed or pet rough and tumble, reinforcing your seams with more than one machine pass provides strength compared to a quick hand stitch line for an October occasional. As your handling your fabric – especially if it is already something older, stretched, or delicate, be careful not to tug and pull against the machine and create any uneven bunching. Knowing my machine gets tension issues with thicker fabrics, I sewed a former Halloween sweatshirt turned pillow by hand, first with a basting stitch and then going back around with a nicer, straight line finish. If you have trouble hand sewing, use a thimble or consider your needle size or thread weight if your thread keeps breaking or you poke your fingers. Remember this is a great way to learn some sewing basics if you’re interested in advancing to more ambitious projects.

4) It’s stuffing time! How you stuff your pillow is entirely up to you – soft, firm, overstuffed, whatever your comfort needs. A tired throw pillow can be revitalized as new Halloween innards, store bought pillow forms come in a variety of sizes, and natural or organic alternatives are available, however Poly-Fil is probably the most fun. A seasonal pillow that isn’t for sleeping or bedding use can be stuffed firm with plastic bags, disused towels, or fabric scraps, especially if you are light on real Poly-Fil or want to spread it around in combination with other materials. Heck, even dryer lint! My Halloween pillows were for decoration, so an outer layer of Poly-Fil smoothed the shape but within the interior of the pillow were plastic bags and recycled denim insulation from food deliveries. Don’t want to admit you are cheap and calling it recycling (like me)? As a pillow flattens with use or as you purchase proper stuffing, one can always refill or change a pillow later. The more advanced seamstress might even add a zipper closure to the pillow bottom so it can be continually stuffed with more fabric cabbage. Who’s going to know what’s inside the pillow anyway?

5) Don’t toss the leftovers! Remember those cut collars and excised sleeves? Use ’em for that stuffing! The sleeves from the T-shirt pillows on our game room bean bag became Stuffed Pumpkins, and long sleeves can become arm warmers. That extra shirt bottom can become its own plain practice pillow or be folded over to make a mask. Two of my Halloween shirts had small vampish designs, so I made these masks instead of pillows. Initially, they were way too big for my face, but I went around the edges again and folded the sides to make a channel for the ear elastics. I think I was overcompensating in trying to preserve the Halloween statement by trying to shape the mask to the design, which turned out to be unnecessary. Maximize every inch of your materials when possible. Get into outside the box thinking habits and ask yourself, “What else could this be? How else can this be useful?” Use these scrap materials to practice more easy sewing projects!

Halloween pillows are one of the most popular October items today. Toss one in any room and your decorating is done! Even when they aren’t super elaborate, however, designer seasonal pillows are pretty expensive. If we don’t even spend $25 on a bed pillow used every day, why are we spending just as much on some kind of beaded burlap decoration? For the same price, you can buy the Poly-Fil for two or three homemade Halloween pillows – and you get to control the comfort, use, style, and sentiment. Preserve a bemusing T-shirt as a Halloween pillow and get the whole family involved in the sewing skills and stuffing fun.

Revisit more Kbatz Krafts including: 

Pumpkin Ottomans, Oh yes

Decorating Like Dark Shadows

Gothic Thrift Alterations

Victorian Bonnets and Capes

For more Step by Step Project Photos, Follow Kbatz Krafts on Facebook! 

Free Fiction Wednesday: A Date with Monsieur Baudelaire by Alex S. Johnson

A Date with Monsieur Baudelaire
by Alex S. Johnson

“Well, this is awkward,” said Giselle Duras (in French, of course, as that was her native language). She had shown up promptly to the small artist’s cafe in Montparnasse and now anticipated trekking the Walk of Shame known to other artist’s models who had been stood up by the distinguished and infamous author of Les Fleurs Du Mal.

Mlle. Duras was just about to collect her parasol and beat a quick exit through the kitchen when a thunderous voice called from just behind her. She started, blushed and brought her lace-gloved fingers to her mouth.

“Monsieur!” she said. “You scared me!”

“Sit,” he said imperiously.

She did as he instructed.

“I hope you weren’t planning to beat a hasty escape through that squalid kitchen. At best, you would smear your dainty boots with offal; at worst…” he shuddered and a grave look settled on his oddly handsome, square-jawed face.

Charles Baudelaire sat his tall black velvet hat on a seat beside him and, like a conjurer, produced a large package from beneath his cloak.

“Your beauty merits more than the baubles a handful of francs can summon,” he said with a grandiloquent sweep of his arms.

Mlle. Duras pushed her veil aside, revealing her pale skin and dark blue eyes, her delicate features and thin nose.  She examined the box. It was covered in black crepe with an oxblood ribbon. She thought for a moment there must be some error. It looked more like a consolatory gift given a widow than a romantic gesture. But as Monsieur was well known for his eccentricities in art as well as life, she suppressed the desire to call the gendarmes strolling the dank alleyway behind the kitchen. She mustn’t let her nervous fears overwhelm her.

Mustn’t.

“You are like a fair and fragrant rose, ma cherie,” Baudelaire added. Now he was laying it on a bit thick. But he was, after all, the celebrated author of forbidden works, and she was more than a bit curious what mysteries the box held within it.

He tapped the package with a long, cadaverous finger. “You reject my present?”

“Pour moi?” she asked, her eyelashes fluttering. His lips pursed to a thin white line uncomfortably close to a scar.

“You reject my present, you reject me!” he announced to the cafe in general. Two painters who were guzzling their lunch turned around and, upon seeing the great poet in their midst, turned green and left the cafe on their knees, bowing and kissing the floor where his boots had left muddy tracks spackled with clumps of snow.

“No, no, please,” said Mlle. Duras. “I am flattered and honored you would think to bestow such kindness on a mere model, especially on a first date.” She hoped he wasn’t like the other great poets she had met under similar circumstances, who expected, nay, demanded favors she was ill-equipped to bestow. She was saving herself for a nobleman, although she thought perhaps once that grim ritual had been executed, she might keep a poet on the side for sport.

Duras had been raised in a convent until released at the age of 18 into a world she didn’t quite understand, and soon learned that her knowledge of the scriptures, prayer and fasting was inadequate to the challenge of life in Paris in the late 19th Century.

Her fingers trembling, she plucked the bow from the package and proceeded to carefully unwrap it.

“Close your eyes,” said Baudelaire once the box lay bare.

She complied, terrified now.

She heard rustling and fluttering as he pushed the wrapping paper down flat on the flowered tablecloth and popped the box open.

“Et voila!” he said. “You may look now.”

---

 

Shortly after her date with Monsieur Baudelaire, Giselle Duras returned to the convent a nervous wreck, her mind shattered beyond any hope of recovery. The other artist’s models didn’t miss her, were glad, in fact, that “the neurotic bitch went home to Jesus.”

To her dying day, she would never forget the cloud of flies that swarmed up from the rotting head, one eyeball still intact, shreds of flesh clinging to the bones, the sickly-sweetish odor, and, worst of all, Baudelaire’s smile, accompanied by tender words, at the revelation: “One day you will be like that, my love, my indolent, catlike goddess. Your skin will shrink on your frame, your sockets will inhale your vision, and you will exhale the vilest stink that to my nostrils glorifies the odor of the grave over any perfume. Worms will crawl along your clavicles and tree roots will impale your soft tissue. Then you will bloat like a pregnant cow…”

She had barely been carried out the cafe door when another model plumped herself down in Baudelaire’s lap and, caressing him slowly, kissed him on the neck. “I’d be delighted to get a gift like that from such a fine gentleman as yourself,” she said, her nostrils flaring like a pig. She shifted her heavy buttocks against him.

“You too will be like this,” he said, after the stormy look of disappointment had passed. “My love, my goddess, my angel of the gutters.”

“Aw, you poets and your fancy talk.”