Sugar Skull Bunting

Ready for Halloween?  How about Autumn?

Every year I like to make a new bit of Halloween/Autumn decor to install around the house.  This past weekend and up until yesterday mid-morning, the weather was freaky warm... hot and humid even.  It was not October.  The skies were grey the leaves were blowing around on the streets but the temperature didn't match the rest of the scene.  After a few wet downpours, the temperature dropped and dropped and now it feels like fall!  Welcome cool and windy weather - LOVE IT!

I've been eyeing up some groovy skull buntings on pinterest and yesterday I sat down and crafted one of my own - can I tell you something?  IT IS AWESOME...just exactly what I wanted and now it's hanging across the mantle just waiting to scare all who enter my living room.

Want to make one of your own?  Well here's how.

I found this cute skull pattern here.  It's from a blog called Kristen's Krazy Knits.  It is crochet however.  I pretty much followed the pattern as written.  I'm not sure if there's an error in the instructions or if I made the same error six times repeated, but when the instructions say," This should get you back to the chain 2 you made to create the nose," I found myself off by two stitches every time.  Nonetheless, I did manage to make it work and I'm happy with my rainbow colored skulls.  I used sugar and cream cotton yarn and an H sized hook to make the skulls.

I also loved the sugar skulls in this crochet bunting from Red Heart.



Red Heart provides an entire pdf with instructions for this bunting.  I could have just used it entirely.  I did look at the photo up close and figure out that the white skull part was a sc circle with a rectangular off one end to place the teeth, but I didn't follow the pattern, just winged it on my own.  I liked the eyes, the teeth and the flower on the forehead - however, I wanted a heart for a nose.  I also winged the teeth.

I used this flower pattern for the eyes.  I had this heart pattern saved in my crochet heart board on pinterest. I added a row of crochet chain stitch to the heart and attached it upside down.  I used this pattern for the forehead flower but winged a set of double leaves to look like the sample.  The forehead flower pattern is in a non-English language and even with translation, I couldn't quite follow.

Most of the sugar skull was made with the same sugar and cream cotton yarn.  Most of it was done with an H crochet hook but I did switch to an F sized hook to make some of the skull face parts a bit smaller.

I stitched the parts to the white background with a weaving-in needle and a bit of knot tying to the back.

The whole thing was assembled into a bunting using the H hook, some black cotton yarn, and a bit of chain stitching.  It looks just like I wanted!

With the drop in temperature I decided it was full time to hang my FAVORITE crochet wreath back on the door... check out my Autumn Wreath Pattern here - one of my most loved crochet creations.