DIY Fall Leaf Paper Bag Garland

Hello! I am back with another fun tutorial for your fall decor that your company will “ooh” and “aww” over. 🙂 Last week I shared my fall decor with you, and promised to show you how to make this stunning DIY fall leaf paper bag garland. I really love how it turned out, especially how big and chunky the leaves are and how realistic it looks.

While this project was not hard, it was a little more involved than a simple DIY garland. However, there are some parts you can eliminate if you want to recreate this garland more simply. For instance, the stitching of the veins. While it adds some character to the leaves, it is not necessary for the garland to still look fantastic. In fact, maybe you prefer it without the veins? 😉

Don’t want to read all the instructions? Here is a quick little video showing you how make the leaf garland. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading. 😉

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

For this project you will need:

• Brown Paper Lunch Bags
• Fusible Webbing
• Iron
• Scissors
• Sewing Machine and Thread (optional)
• Hot Glue Gun and Glue Sticks
• 26 Gauge Wire
• Wire Cutters
• Branches
• Leaf Templates

Do you remember when we were kids making crafts out of brown paper bags where you would crinkle up the paper until it was super soft? While I did not go that far, I did want to crinkle the paper to make it softer and take on the appearance of dried leaves. So along with the help of my 11 yr old, we got to scrunching. After the bags were sufficiently scrunched, we tore them open along the seams to make flat sheets.

I wanted my leaves to be more sturdy and stiff so I decided to fuse two pieces of the paper bags together. Again for simplicity, you could skip this part and just do one layer. I used this fusible webbing. I have heard many names for this product, fusible interfacing, iron on adhesive etc. It is all the same thing. 🙂 I was not sure how it would adhere to the paper bags as I had only used it on fabric before, but it worked perfectly. 

Take one of the paper bag sheets and fold it in half. Then cut a piece of the fusible webbing to fit onto half of the paper bag sheet. 

Sandwich the fusible webbing between the two layers of brown paper bag. Make sure to put the adhesive side down and paper backing side up. 

Iron the closed paper bag “sandwich”. This will not only adhere the fusible webbing to the bottom layer, it also flattens out the crinkles in your paper. Remove the paper backing from the fusible webbing. Again, iron the closed paper bag sandwich. Make sure you do not get your iron directly onto the fusible webbing as it will leave brown residue on your iron that is hard to clean off.

I found a leaf clip art that I liked and made some different sized templates from it. Here are the templates if you like them too. 🙂 Trace the templates on card stock and cut them out.

Next trace the leaf templates onto the paper bags. I was able to fit two of the smaller sized leaves or one big sized leaf on one bag. Keep that in mind when estimating how many fused bags to make. Next just cut out your leaves.

I decided to stitch some veins onto the leaves for some color. I used three different colors of thread, a burnt orange, mustard yellow and dark forest green.

Like I said earlier, this is optional. I really liked how neutral the leaves looked on their own too so I did not stitch all of them to mix it up a bit. I hand drew the vein lines on with a pencil.

When sewing them, I used my satin stitch presser foot. This is a great all purpose foot to use and I love that I can line up the little arrow as a guide to follow my line and sew away. I started sewing at the top of the leaf and made my way to the bottom, then back up to the top going over the line again to darken it up more. 

I did not get too worried if the lines did not match up exactly. It just gives the leaf more character! 😉 What do you think? Cute, huh?

I wasn’t sure how I was going to make this into a garland initially. I thought about stringing the leaves onto a rope but I wanted the garland to look more realistic. So I decided to attach the leaves onto some branches with some wire. I hot glued the wire down to one leaf, then wrapped the wire around the branch and glued the end to another leaf on the opposite side. This made some leaf clusters.

To keep the leaf clusters from moving around, I hot glued the wire down to the branch. I spread them out along the length of a long branch. I stole a couple of my decorative branches from a vase. They were perfect because they were so long!

The wire also gives the leaves pliability. You can mold the actual leaf into different positions. I think this adds to the realistic look of the leaves.

I was also able to move them in and around the books on my fall mantel easily.

There were a couple extra clusters that were not attached to a branch that I laid on each end to help fill things out. 

Is this something you think you want to try? I think it would also look great in a dough bowl with some pumpkins or laying on a runner in a tablescape. Maybe I will have to use it for a Thanksgiving table setting! Until then, I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Halloween tomorrow!