Upcycled Denim Halloween Keychains From Old Jeans

Upcycle leftover jeans and belt loops into the cutest little denim Halloween keychains. These hand-stitched pumpkins, ghosts, and skulls make a fun scrap-busting sewing project and can be used as keychains, bag charms, or strung together into a quirky little Halloween garland.

I’m apparently incapable of throwing away even the smallest scrap of denim, especially when there are old belt loops involved. This time, my leftovers became a little gang of Halloween keychains: pumpkins, ghosts, and skulls, all hand-stitched and lightly stuffed.

I’ve made heart-shaped denim keychains before, but these are their slightly spookier cousins. I made five altogether, and while they work as keychains or bag charms, they also look cute strung together as a mini Halloween garland.

Halloween Crafts From Old Jeans

Denim works surprisingly well for Halloween. The different faded blues, visible stitching and slightly frayed edges suit decorations that aren't supposed to look too polished.

I've used old jeans for Halloween before to make my embroidered denim Halloween pockets. They're another handy project if you're cutting up a pair of jeans, as you can save the pockets for those and keep the smaller scraps and belt loops for these keychains.

What You'll Need

• Scraps of old denim in different shades
• Old jeans belt loops
• Small scraps of patterned fabric
• Iron-on interfacing
• Cream felt
• Embroidery thread
• Needle
• Scissors
• A little toy stuffing
• Paper and pencil for the templates
• Keyring hardware if you want to use them as actual keychains

This is very much a use-what-you-have project. Different shades and weights of denim only add to the patchwork look.

How To Make Halloween Keychains

Step 1: Add Interfacing to the Fabrics: Before cutting out the shapes, iron interfacing onto the back of the denim. Follow the instructions for your particular iron-on interfacing when attaching it.

I also added interfacing to the back of the little patterned fabric and denim scraps I used for the facial features. This helps prevent the cut edges from fraying and makes tiny pieces like eyes and noses much easier to work with.

You don't need to add it to the felt pieces, as felt won't fray.

Step 2: Cutting out Halloween Templates: You can download my Halloween keychain templates here. Or draw your own. If you want to add a few more characters, you'll find more templates with my Halloween treat bags.

If designing your own templates, keep the shapes chunky, with few fiddly details. You need to be able to stitch around them and add a little stuffing later. I mixed light and dark denim depending on the design and, more importantly, what happened to be in my scrap pile.

Step 3: Cut Out the Denim Shapes: Use your paper templates to cut two matching denim pieces for each Halloween character, one for the front and one for the back.

I mixed light and dark denim depending on the design and, more importantly, what happened to be in my scrap pile. Once you've cut the main shapes, cut out the eyes, noses and other little fabric details.

Step 4: Make the Denim Jack-o'-Lantern face: I used tiny pieces of patterned patchwork fabric for the eyes. With interfacing on the back, the little shapes are much easier to cut neatly and shouldn't fray at the edges.

Stitch the eyes onto the front denim pumpkin, then hand-stitch a crooked pumpkin mouth directly onto the denim.

Step 5: Make the Denim Skull Face: I made two denim skulls, one light and one dark.

I used light-coloured denim with darker denim scraps for the eyes and nose and a black stitched mouth. For the darker denim, I stitched on cream felt eyes and a white embroidered mouth.

Don't worry too much about symmetry or perfect stitching. A slightly wonky skull has far more character than a perfectly behaved one.

Step 6: The Denim Ghost Face: The ghost is another very simple design, made from light denim with dark denim shapes for the eyes and mouth.

Again, I backed the denim used for the little facial features with interfacing before cutting them out. You could easily reverse the colours and make a dark denim ghost with pale felt features. Mixing the different washes of old jeans is part of the fun of making a whole collection.

Step 8: Stitch and Stuff the Keychains: Once you've finished the faces, pin the matching front and back denim pieces wrong sides together, then hand-stitch around the outside of each denim shape. Use a simple running stitch, leaving a small opening for the stuffing.

Add just a little toy stuffing. You only need enough to give your character some dimension. Before stitching the opening closed, pin and stitch a folded denim belt loop. For the jack-o'-lantern, the belt loop also cleverly doubles as the pumpkin stalk.

You can then add keyring hardware to the belt loop if you want to turn your little Halloween character into an actual keychain.

Make a Mini Halloween Garland

I ended up making five of these little denim characters, and they looked so good together that I tried hanging them as a mini Halloween garland.

The belt loops make this ridiculously easy. Just thread them onto a length of string, twine or ribbon, space out your tiny monsters and hang.

You could make a whole row of pumpkins, alternate ghosts and skulls, or make a mixture using whatever shades of denim you have.

It's a fun little decoration for a mantel, shelf, or Halloween display, and once Halloween is over, the individual characters can go back to being keychains or bag charms.

More Fun With Denim Scraps

If you enjoyed making these little Halloween characters, there are plenty more excuses to keep hold of those old jeans. My denim fabric key fobs are another small scrap-busting project and a good one for using some of the more interesting seams, labels and details from a pair of jeans.

For more substantial makes, browse my denim sewing projects for lots more ideas for turning old jeans into something useful, decorative, or just a bit different.

And denim definitely isn't just for Halloween. Once the ghosts and pumpkins have been packed away, you can move straight on to my favourite denim Christmas decorations. Old jeans work surprisingly well with festive makes too, and by then you'll probably have another pile of scraps to deal with.

If it's the Halloween characters that caught your eye, don't miss my popular Halloween wine cork characters, a rather odd little gathering of spooky faces made from old corks. Or, for more hand stitching and embroidered expressions, take a look at my Scandinavian felt Halloween decorations.