Imagining a future nursery is one of the pleasant pastimes of a pregnant women. I was thinking of a castle-themed nursery, but I could not work on it at the time because we were about to make a big move across the country. So, to keep my hands busy I made a bunch of little stuffed ghosts to decorate the future room with. What castle would not want to have such happy company? The little fellows have stayed with Budster ever since, been chewed on and dragged around outside, and of course, participated in our Halloween fun!

As much as I wish it were otherwise, I am not an accomplished seamstress. So you can rest assured that if there is a project that requires sewing on my blog, it is an easy one. When I was working on the ghosts, we lived about an hour and a half away from the closest fabric store, so I could not run out for materials, either. Instead, I used an old t-shirt and a towel – somewhat worn-out, but oh so soft! All in all, consider it to be a quick project to make with what is on hand – and have fun.

Materials

– three or four different pieces of beige fabric (in our case, twill, silk and terrycloth)
– polyester stuffing or wool (and if you make these ghosts for older children and do not have to worry about chocking hazard, you can try putting beans inside)
– assortment of white buttons
– needle and white/beige thread

Tutorial

1. Print the patterns on a 8.5 x 11″ sheet of paper and cut them out at the dotted lines.

2. Transfer the ghost shapes onto the fabric and cut two of each. Then cut the heart and rectangular shapes.

3. Sew the heart and rectangle onto the front part of ghosts.

4. Sew two halves together inside-out, leaving a small gap for putting the stuffing in.

5. Turn the ghost right-side-out and stuff it generously. You can use a pencil for making sure that the stuffing goes into the tight spots.

6. Sew the gap up.

7. Choose a couple of quirky buttons for eyes and sew them in place. If you are making these ghosts for babies to use as teethers, you will want to avoid using buttons (choking hazard). You can embroider eyes with a few stitches or use little pieces of black and white felt to create fabric eyes.

You can put the ghosts onto strings and hang as a decoration in the nursery. But you know what Budster liked to do most? He loved chewing on the terrycloth ghost! Apparently, terrycloth is great for teething babies.

Of course, these ghosts were our special guests last Halloween. When we had a Halloween party for babies, we put them in a basket in the “horror room”. It was not very horrible. Just a bed sheet over a table to create a crawl space for little adventurers. Pillows and stuffed toys waited for them inside.

For the rest of the year, the ghosts lived in the book basket and enjoyed reading about castles, dragons and knights!

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