Once again, I turned to trusty ole Pinterest to get creative. I already had my sewing machine out and felt like making a garland for the mantle out of book pages.

Here is my inspiration. I was drawn to the garlands that looked full and gathered. A great project to keep you occupied between texts of your new nieces birth!

If you have any sewing experience – even just a little- this project is a piece of cake. All you need to know how to do is sew a straight line and fold paper.

I checked out my bookshelf for the materials. I wanted an old book and one that had sentimental value to it. Not just any book from a thrift store, but that could certainly be the perfect place to find one. You also have to have nerves of steel to rip pages out of a book, especially if you love books. I found the perfect pages for my garland. I had a diary as a pre-teen. I only used 4 pages. I took those pages out carefully and placed them in my childhood photo album. Then, I went to ripping. Ripping is important for this project. No neat lines needed. It is also supposed to be quick, like less than 45 minutes quick. Rip away!

My diary!

Here are the ripped out pages and how I folded the pages.

The longest part of this project was folding all the pages. I decided to fan fold it in thirds length-wise. I did this knowing that I would then fold it in half when I got to the sewing. I choose brown thread and a quilting needle on my machine. I set the tension at about 4 and used a medium length stitch.

I had no real plan for the garland… I didn’t even count how many pages I had. Just began sewing and putting it together as I fed it through the machine. Let the fun begin!

Left to Right: Sewing finished just crinkling and opening the fanned pages. Garland mid-way through. Garland in progress.

This project did not take long and the results were fabulous and just what I needed to spur the Halloween decorating.

I even went back to Trader Joe’s for more pumpkins!

Mantle complete. I had everything on hand except for the pumpkins.