One Great Halloween Table Topper

The Halloween spirit continues with this fun table topper!

For this one, I picked some of the fun Halloween fabric from my stash and just started cutting wedges with my 10° Wedge Ruler. I know the lengths are all a little different but I will get to how I fixed that in a bit. My shortest wedge was about 8.” If your shortest piece is shorter or longer, then your circle will end up being a little bigger or smaller. My finished diameter is 24″.

The first thing to do is to just sew strips together until you get a circle that lays flat.

Next, I needed a template to make the circle in the middle so I auditioned things around my house until I found that my small salad plates were the perfect size. I traced around the plate with my FriXion Pen onto Sulky Soft ‘n Sheer™ Extra and cut out a circle of the stabilizer and the fabric for the center.  (It needs to be about 1/4″ larger than the center circle all around.)

I put the fusible side (the bumpy side) to the right side of the fabric and sewed all the way around.

Next, cut a slit in the center of the Sulky Soft ‘n Sheer Extra ONLY, and clipped the edges (or you could trim them with a pinking shears instead). This gives you the ability to turn the circle. It tucks all the raw edges in nicely and gives you the fusible side of the stabilizer down so you can fuse it into place before sewing (Bonus!)

Use an applique pressing sheet underneath when fusing the circle in place (remember, the circle is “open” beneath the center).

Now it’s time to quilt! Layer the backing, batting, and top together using Sulky KK 2000 Temporary Spray Adhesive to hold everything together nicely. For a stronger hold, spray the fabric, not the batting and smooth everything out.  Pin occasionally if you want to.

I used Sulky 40 wt. PolyDeco in black, orange and tangerine from the Limited Edition PolyDeco Halloween thread assortment for the quilting.

I personally love spiders and am fascinated by their webs so I went with a traditional spider web design for the center in black and then did a zigzag like a zipper spider on the strips going out from the center (I don’t know if that is the spider’s official name, but that’s what we always called them growing up).

After quilting, I wanted to make sure I cut a perfect circle so I went old school with a safety pin, string and white marking pencil.

Draw the circle holding the pin. Start at the shortest strip. I started with the green since that was my shortest strip.

Next, simply cut on the line you just drew!

For binding, cut 2-1/4″ strips on a 60° bias. Since this is a circle, you definitely need the binding to be on the bias but when the curve is not too drastic, a 60° bias allows you to get more binding out of less fabric and it still has plenty of give. Another tip about binding; I don’t iron my strip in half, I just fold it over, wrong sides together, as I sew. This lets the fabric fold over to the backside more easily for the hand stitching part of the binding process. (Hint: I you are allergic to hand sewing, you can always cheat and fuse the backside of the binding down with Steam-a-Seam 2 1/4″ strips. I won’t tell anyone)

Tada! It’s done! This topper took me about 8 hours to do, which I did in 2 hour increments over a few days. I love my new table topper. What do you think?

Happy Sewing!

Looking for more great Halloween ideas? Check out all my Halloween blog posts here.