Fall Treat Tree

The weather is getting cooler and the leaves are changing to all the glorious shades of reds, yellows, oranges and browns. Fall is finely in full swing around here in NW Arkansas. I drove south down the mountain to the neighbouring city of Ft. Smith earlier this week and the trees were so beautiful.

To give tribute to the Fall season and its many colors, I thought I would make a Fall Treat Tree similar to the one that was on Woman's Day website. Which just so happened to go along with this weeks CSI Challenge. So early this morning (before 6 AM), I began to put my plan into action.

First, I went out into our yard on a search for a small tree limb that would work for what I had in mind. When I found the one that suited my eye, I brought it back to the house and spray painted it black. (Sorry, but I forgot to take a picture of me spray painting the branch.) I think it was because I was so excited to do this project.

While the painted branch was drying I came on into the house and started a search in my craft room for fabric to make the treat bags from. Finding fabric wasn't the problem. It was narrowing it down to what would look good together. I finally came up with this combination of colors.

 I ironed all the fabric pieces. As some of them were small pieces that had been stuffed into the scrap drawer. Then I cut several 3" x 9" strips from each of the various fabrics.

Next, I turned down the short side about 1/2" on both ends of each piece and stitched it across each one. This made a casing for the string closure.

Once all the short ends were sewn, I then went back and folded each strip in half, right sides together, and stitched up the sides just to the casing stitches. Always back stitch or the sides will pull apart.

I then turned them all right side out and ironed them once again. Now I had a bunch of "little" bags. To finish them off I attached some black yarn to a safety pin and ran it through both sides of each bag, then tied the ends together. This made a pull that would close the bag and also allowed it to hang from the "tree".

By the time that I had these all completed the spray paint on the tree branch was good and dried. I brought it in and placed it in a white vase I had and placed some paper around it to stabilize it within the vase. To hide the paper, I took another piece of fabric and tucked it around the top of the vase.

Finally, I hung my "Little Treat Bags" all over the tree. I don't have any "Treats" (candy) yet to place inside of each bag. I will pick up some candy treats to put in each bag to give away to visitors on Halloween soon. If I get them now, everyone in the house will be eating them and I won't have any for the trick-or-treaters later.

I think I will make a few more of these little bags though, just to make sure that we have plenty. We live far enough out of town that we do not get too many trick-or-treaters, but we do have our grand kids, our teenage children (who still think they need to get treats), and a few neighbor kids that will want one. Plus, its always a good idea to have a few extra treats just in case this is the year that we get a lot of visitors.

 

I think it turned out rather cute. Don't you? It does remind me of the leaves on those lovely trees I saw earlier this week. When I took this picture the sun was just beaming through the window and made the colors just that much more vivid and brillant. Love it! 

I would love to hear what you think about how it turned out. What Fall projects have you done?

Check out the other CSI entries

Happy Fall Y'All!