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It’s never too early to get your spook on, and this DIY Halloween Decor for you Punch Needlers out there are in for a ghouly treat!
If the quirky cowboy ghost isn’t up your alley, you can take a look at our 28 Free Punch Needle Halloween Patterns and see which ones strike your spooky fancy. Or, you can give Canva a whirl and see what Halloween treats you find.
Without further delay, let’s get this DIY Halloween Decor party started!
DIY Halloween Decor Punch Needle Ghost Steps
We love all things Punch Needle, and especially providing quality steps, like this DIY Halloween Decor project, to crafters like YOU who are looking for some lovely (or, in this case, spooky) crafting projects they can rely on. We take pride in providing quality steps that have pictures and clear language that’s easy to follow.
Nothing is more frustrating than following along with a DIY Halloween Decor project and feeling lost in the steps because everything feels rushed or skimmed over. We’ve done our very best to prevent that so you can have a pleasant Punch Needle experience!
Supplies Needed for DIY Halloween Decor
Before we get our crafty hype music on and get going on this adorable and spooky aesthetic DIY Halloween decor project, let’s go over the supplies you’ll need.
- Punch Needle (Needle length set to how large you want your loops to be. Our loop length is on the shorter end for this DIY Halloween project)
- Wire Threader (Not pictured)
- Embroidery Hoop
- Monk’s Cloth
- Crafting Scissors/Thread Trimmer
- Painter’s Tape
- Fabric Marker/Sharpie
- Yarn (Colors up to the crafter)
- Hot Glue Gun W/ Hot Glue (Not Pictured)
- Felt (Or desired Backing) (Not Pictured)
Step One: Prepare Embroidery Hoop & Design
Our first step for your DIY Halloween Decor ghosty is to get your desired size Embroidery Hoop out and prepare to get your Monk’s Cloth on and trace your design.
When cutting out your Monk’s Cloth, use your Embroidery Hoop as a guide by leaving a few inches of extra Monk’s Cloth around the hoop.
Bonus Tip: Use painter’s tape around the sides of your Monk’s Cloth to prevent fraying while you’re working on your DIY Halloween project. The bottom of our Monk’s Cloth piece is seamed shut, so we don’t have to tape that part!
After you’ve got your Monk’s Cloth, cut out and the tape along the sides, you can get that Monk’s Cloth nice and snug inside your Embroidery Hoop! What’s absolutely important is making sure your fabric is taut before you start punching. Your loops won’t be able to stay if your fabric isn’t tight. If your fabric is too loose, your loops will sadly unravel, and we don’t want that.
An alternative to purchasing a lightbox, used to trace images onto fabric/paper, is utilizing your laptop/computer/screen as a makeshift lightbox!
Using your Fabric Marker, or Sharpie, you can carefully and steadily trace your outline on the “back” side of your Embroidery Hoop, like in the photo below. You’ll want to do this so that your loops, or the ‘fuzzy side’, is the finished product when you’re done.
This is another reason why in our other article, 28 Free Punch Needle Halloween Patterns, we discuss why we’ve chosen designs that are more on the simplistic side. When Punch Needling, sometimes details can get muddled in the loops, so if you pick out a design that has detail but not too much, it’s a great fit.
Step Two: Thread Needle & Begin Punching Small Details/Outline First
Let’s move on to step 2 in our DIY Halloween Decor project, and this is where the punching begins!
Our suggestion is to start out by punching your smallest details and outline first. This makes for a smoother punch needle experience as you go on, and we’ve found in our own punch needle experience that this method works the best.
With that being said, you can go ahead and thread your Punch Needle with the color of yarn you’ll be using for your outline. In this quirky ghost’s case, it’s outline and smallest details are the same black color.
Start punching on the backside where you’ve made your outline!
It’s pretty exciting once you get your outline punched because you can start to see your DIY Halloween Decor come to life!
Once your outline is punched in and you’ve covered your smaller details, such as the ghost’s eyes, you can also begin the outlining with the color you want the ghost to be. Traditionally white, but get your creative juices flowing if you want to think outside the ghoul box!
To try and prevent your loops from colliding when you’re punching this close, like in the photo above, you can use your hand that’s not holding your Punch Needle and hold the other yarn loops away from where you’re punching. You’ll be able to feel the Punch Needle come up by your fingers on the other side, and you can move them along as you’re punching. If you’d rather not do this, you can always use the tip of your Punch Needle when you’re done punching your DIY Halloween Decor and rearrange the loops as needed.
To make your workspace clearer, if that’s your vibe, you can snip any thread tails along the way once you’re done with that section and you’re happy with that stitch.
Step Three: Continue Punching the Remainder of the Design
Now you can get those hands ready for some big punching action! You can continue to Punch Needle the remainder of the large details of your DIY Halloween Decor project. In this case, we’re punching the rest of our little cowboy ghost’s sheet.
We’ve gone with a more cowboy aesthetic colors for our ghost’s hat, but we encourage you to get wild with it! Believe us, if we had pink colors on hand, we would’ve made a lovely Barbie Cowgirl Ghosty.
Go ahead and make that fabulous hat come to life by outlining it with your desired yarn color.
After you’ve outlined that cool hat, you can fill in the detailed spots with your color of choice.
And bring it all home by filling in the rest of your DIY Halloween Decor ghost’s hat!
Would ya look at that, we’re nearly done with your DIY Halloween Decor quirky ghosty!
You do have a few choices of how you’d like to finish your DIY Halloween Decor project that we’ll lay out for you:
- Leave your project in the hoop with or without a punched-in background
- Take your DIY Halloween Decor project out of the hoop and create a hanging for it
If you’d like to go with the 2nd option, come continue the journey with us below! If not, we love that for you, and thank you for coming along for this fun DIY Halloween journey!
Step Four: Cut Thread Tails Off & Take the Design Off the Hoop
Before we take this awesome ghost off the hoop, make sure that all your remaining yarn tails are snipped off. If you do other crafting projects that require stuffing or have a friend who does so, saving the yarn and Monk’s Cloth leftovers is a great way to repurpose these materials!
Tip: Before diving into these steps, go ahead and plug in your Hot Glue Gun so it’s ready to go!
After all those yarn tails are snipped off, you can go ahead and take your ghost out of the Embroidery Hoop and carefully take the Painter’s Tape off of your Monk’s Cloth. There will be strands of Monk’s Cloth coming off, and that’s perfectly okay. Another reason why it’s helpful to have a few inches of extra Monk’s Cloth when we initially cut our piece of fabric out for our DIY Halloween Decor project.
Step Five: Cut Around Design, Hot Gluing & Finishing!
WooHoo we’re on the last step, the homestretch for your special and spooky DIY Halloween Decor project! Get those crafting scissors out and cut around your project, leaving a few inches of Monk’s Cloth around your design.
After the extra Monk’s Cloth is cut off, you can then take your scissors and cut slits all around your DIY Halloween Decor project, just like in the photo below. You don’t want to cut into the yarn but don’t be afraid to cut right up to it.
Once your slits have been made around your entire project, you can get your ready-to-go Hot Glue gun and begin hot gluing down your Monk’s Cloth tabs onto the flat stitch side of your project.
Way to go getting all those Monk’s Cloth tabs glued down on the flatstitch side of your DIY Halloween project! Now you’ll be doing sort of that same step by Hot Gluing your choice of backing (we’re using purple felt pictured below) to the flatstitch side of your spooky work of art.
Bonus Tip: We wanted to get a little crafty and create our own hanging string with yarn colors that we used in our DIY Halloween Decor project. We’ve taken 3 strands of yarn and braided them together to create a nifty string hanging that we can Hot Glue to our work.
Go ahead and take your string of choice, measure out how much want, and hot glue it to your work before finishing gluing the backing on.
Once you’ve hot-glued around all the edges and it’s had time to fasten and dry, you can use your scissors to cut around your project.
And then there you have it: your DIY Halloween Decor is finished! Your quirky western ghosty is ready to be hung up and enjoyed for years to come! We even suggest giving your Western Ghosty a name; here are a few to get the ball rolling:
- Willie
- Jesse
- Wayne
- Pearl
- Bass
- Clyde
- Rider
- Beth
- Rose
- Wess
- Montana
- Clem
- Dakota
- Casey
- Weston
- Dusty
We hope you’ve enjoyed this DIY Halloween Decor Project as much as we enjoyed sharing it with you Punch Needlers out there! Be sure to check out the other tips, tricks, projects, and more on our Punch Needle page. Have a fun, spooky Halloween season!