How to Sew Pumpkin Halloween Placemats

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Karina Fraley with Expert Village and we are making Halloween themed place mats. Put the foot down and keep going. There are so many great fabrics out there that it's actually hard to make a decision. When I went to the store today to try to pick out what fabrics I was going to use, I really had to restrain myself from going crazy in there. There are all kinds of beautiful colors and patterns. Every year they just come out with more and more stuff. It's a lot of fun to sew. And it's a lot of fun to stay within the theme of a Holiday or special occasion. There is a lot you can do. As I said, zigzag stitches are very hard to undo. A lot of time you have to end up just sort of cutting the edges and starting all over again. So I don't want to push it. I don't want to go too far and make it too tight. Basically, you're going to have some rough edges, but the great thing about the zigzag stitch is that you're just going to take your scissors and you are going to clean up your edges. And I'm going to do that now. Turn off my machine and move that over. I'm going to trim all around now. The great part about the zigzag stitch is that you can go all the way to the very edge. Your fabric is held nice and secure. So you get a very clean line. That's one of the reasons I actually like using cotton for my lining and for my facings, because it holds together really well as well without unraveling. So just go ahead because you're not going to want any bulk when we turn it right side out. You're not going to want any bulk around the edges. Just go all the way around, like that. Clean up all your edges. Be sure that you don't cut the stitches. Don't go so close to the edging of the stitches. Then we are going to take out our pins. Then we're ready to turn it around right side out. You're going to want to get into the corners. You can actually maybe even gather it up like that and get into the corners and just basically push out all of the corners. Because we're going to press them out and you're going to want it to all look nice and even. So that's your corners; third corner. Then you?re going to lay it flat like that. We're going to iron it and we're going to slip stitch it closed."