Halloween Black Cat Banner

With 5 black cats at our house, you can probably guess the theme of all our Halloween decorations. Every year, we pull out the inflatable black cats and put them out in our yard. We place knick knacks of black cats around our porch. And we hang a black cat banner on our front door.

Several years ago I made a black cat banner that featured all 5 of our fur babies. But after several years of it hanging on our door, I decided it was time for a new kitty banner. And this time, instead of 5 kitties in one banner, there’s just one kitty with a very big personality.

Look at that mischievous grin!! He’s clearly up to no good!

Definitely some Halloween trickery up his sleeve, don’t you think?

I’ve got a free pattern for you below.

But before I give you the pattern and tutorial, I’m going to brag on my daughter for a minute. She drew that kitty for me! She is a talented young artist, so when I had the idea of making a kitty and a pumpkin I asked her to draw it for me. (Actually, I paid her to draw it for me. Teenagers, ha!) 10 minutes later she comes back with a sketch of that smirky little kitty and I was in love.

So now we have a cute new black cat banner to hang on our door this year. And I’m sharing the pattern so you can have one, too.

It’s mostly made from quilting weight cotton solids, though you could use a patterned fabric for the background. My background is a purple with some metallic gold threads woven in so it’s all Halloween-y.

The sewing is all pretty simple, though topstitching some of the pieces does involve some tight curves. I used matching thread on all of the topstitching so if it wasn’t super straight it really wouldn’t be noticeable. I also hand cranked the machine on the tightest of curves.

While I used matching threads on the topstitching, I used a gray thread to stitch out the details on the kitty’s paws and face so those lines would stand out.

Materials:

Background – 1 piece, 19” x 26” quilting cotton

Lining – 1 piece, 19” x 26” quilting cotton

Fusible fleece – 1 piece, 18” x 25”

Quilting weight cotton solids

Orange– ½ yard or fat quarter

Black– ½ yard or fat quarter

Green– ¼ yard or fat quarter

Golden yellow – ¼ yard or fat quarter

White – scraps

Pink – scraps

Fusible webbing – 1 yard

½” wood dowel, cut to 21.5” long

Yarn

Free pattern

You will also matching thread for each of the colors in the banner, plus gray thread for stitching the detail lines on the cat’s body.

Tips for Using the Placement & Stitching Guide

This pattern includes a Placement & Stitching Guide to help you get all your pieces placed exactly right. If you’re good at eyeballing things, you can just look at the guide and recreate the placement and stitching on your banner. But if you’re like me and not so good at eyeballing things, here are some tips to help you us the guide to get the placement and stitching just right:

For placing large pieces, try cutting the background away. That will give you the outlines of all the main shapes that you can use to line your pieces up.
For placing small pieces, like the eyes and noses on the cat and jack o’ lantern, try cutting those pieces OUT of the placement guide to create kind of a “stencil”. Then you can lay the guide directly on the banner and place your fabric pieces through the holes of the “stencil”. Carefully remove the guide without disturbing the fabric pieces, and you’ll have perfect placement.
To mark the stitch lines, first cut the guide on the stitch lines. Put the guide down on the banner, then place a fabric marking pencil through the slits you cut to mark the lines on your fabric.

Prep your pieces

Trace all of the pattern shapes on to the back of your fusible webbing. The shapes are already reversed for you.

One thing I like to do when tracing pieces that will be cut out from different colors of fabric is write on each shape which color it should be cut from. Then, when I’m done tracing all the shapes I can easily see which shape should be fused to which color.

Grass – green

Jack O’ Lantern – orange

Jack O’ Lantern Rim – golden yellow

Jack O’ Lantern Ears, Nose, and Mouth – black

Cat – black

Cat eyes – golden yellow

Cat irises – black

Nose- pink

Ears- white

Follow manufacturer’s instructions to fuse each shape to the back of the fabrics. Cut out each shape.

Follow manufacturer’s instructions to fuse the fusible fleece to the back of the banner background.

Drill holes or cut notches at either end of the dowel.

Build the Jack O’ Lantern

Place Grass across bottom of Background piece. Fuse, then top stitch close to the edge to secure.

Place Jack O’ Lantern piece on the Grass. DON’T FUSE YET. This piece is not symmetrical. Use the grainline marking on the pattern and the Placement & Stitching Guide to place it at the correct angle.

Now that the Jack O’Lantern piece is placed, layer the Jack O’ Lantern Rim piece across the top of the pumpkin. There will be a 1/8” overlap between the two pieces. The Jack O’ Lantern Rim piece should be tucked under the Jack O’ Lantern piece at the overlap.

Fuse both pieces, then top stitch them down.

Place the Jack O’ Lantern Eyes, Nose, and Mouth. Fuse them down, then topstitch.

Build the Cat

Place the Cat so he is coming out of the Jack O’ Lantern. Fuse, then top stitch.

Place the Paw. Fuse, then topstitch close to the edge to secure. Don’t worry about stitching the details right now. We’ll go back and do that at the end.

Place the Ears. Fuse, then topstitch.

Place the Eyes. Fuse, then topstitch.

Place the Irises on the Eyes. Fuse, then topstitch.

Place the Nose. Fuse, then topstitch. The curves here are pretty tight. I ended up hand cranking every stitch to make it around. Luckily, it’s a really small piece!

Use the Placement & Stitching Guide to mark the detail stitch lines with a fabric pencil. Stitch the lines in gray thread so they show up on the cat body.

Assemble the Banner

Place the Lining on top of the Background, right sides together. Stitch around all 4 sides with a ½” seam allowance, leaving 4” open at the top to turn.