Halloween is almost here, and I've been in spooky decoration-mode for a few weeks.

The plan is to have all handmade decorations for our Halloween party this year. My fingers are crampy from cutting out bats and I'll be honest - things were going a bit more slowly than I would have liked.

That is, until Saturday when I had an idea for a recycled fabric garland that looks awesome, really fills out all the holes in my decorations, and helped put a nice dent in the ol' fabric scrap bin!

These suckers take about 10-15 minutes to put together. Part of what makes them so fast to assemble is that you don't have to iron the pieces. The wrinkly fabric just adds to the spooky appeal. Ready to make your own fabric banner? Here's how!

Supplies

• fabric scraps - anything long and skinny will do
• scissors
• ribbon - you can even use scraps of ribbon shorter than the full length of your finished garland
• sewing machine

Directions
Measure the area where you're going to hang the garland, adding an extra two feet so that it can hang slack and you'll have tails on either end to hang it.

Sort your scraps into whatever pattern you choose and lay them out. For every 12" of ribbon you're using, you'll probably need about 2-4 scraps, depending on the scraps' width.

Starting 6" from one end of the ribbon, fold the scrap over and place your ribbon in between the fold. Pin in place and repeat with the rest of your scraps, leaving about 2" - 3" in between each piece. If you're using ribbon scraps for this, just connect them by overlapping the ribbon pieces by 1/2" underneath a folded scrap and pinning together.

Run the garland through your sewing machine, stitching along the middle of the ribbon from the first scrap to the last. If you're using ribbon scraps, make sure you sew over both pieces when you get to a ribbon junction.

Voila! These look awesome strung between tree branches, hung across a wall, or in a doorway! You could also string several from the ceiling fan out to the wall for a lovely party tent feel, like The Small Object did with these paper flowers.

Do you have any quick, spooky, DIY decoration ideas? We'd love to hear about them in the comments!