Craft Ideas for the Month of October

Happy October, creative friends!

Autumn is already well underway; the first day of fall this year was September 23, 2024. I hope your fall season got off to a fantastic start.

What types of craft projects are you interested in working on this fall?

Whether you’re brand new to crafts or you have your established favorite technique(s), either way, this craft website is a fantastic place to find fall-friendly craft project ideas you might be interested in working on this month. You’re invited to browse through this website’s pages on the topics of needlecrafts, paper crafts, and other crafts to find patterns, tutorials, and project ideas that interest you.

If you aren’t sure what, exactly, you want to work on making right now, please keep reading; below, I’ve rounded up a bunch of project ideas and suggestions for October craft ideas you can use this month. If you have other suggestions to add to this list, I invite you to post a comment at the end letting me and the other readers here know about them.

Fall Craft Ideas

You Can Crochet Cup Cozies for Making It Easy to Take Your Coffee, Tea, Hot Chocolate and Pumpkin Spice Lattes Wherever You Go

For many people in the western hemisphere, the weather is now chilly; it’s the time of year when many people switch from drinking ice cold beverages to hot ones: think coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and pumpkin spice lattes.

For most students, school is in now in full swing – so if you’re a college student or a parent with school-aged children, you’re probably spending a lot of time on the go.

So, whether you’re drinking hot coffee, iced coffee, or something else all together, now is a fantastic time to whip up some crocheted coffee cup cozies and drink holders that make it easier to take your beverage of choice out the door with you. Cup cozies protect your fingers from accidental burns or chills, and they can also help to absorb any moisture or condensation that finds its way onto the exterior of your cup.

Plus, they’re a fantastic way to differentiate your cup from everyone else’s; you definitely want to have one of these to put your drink in if you and your friends are all headed to the same coffee shop to order the same exact drink served up in the identical, same-sized cup.

My current work in progress is an easy textured crochet coffee cup cozy. Wish me luck with it? And, anyone want to help me test coffee cup cozy patterns?

Update October 11, 2024: I finished one cup cozy and have started on another one! Yay!

Update October 16, 2024: I finished my second coffee cup cozy, too. WooHOO!

Also, I checked a bunch of books out of the library. Pictured above, you can see one of the books I’m reading right now. It’s called Mad Hatter by Aynesley Grealis. It’s super cute! I’ll let you know if I decide to make any of the projects in it.

October Planner Crafts

If you maintain a physical planner, junk journal, scrapbook, or art journal, you might want to decorate your October calendar pages, journal pages or scrapbooking layouts with seasonal stamped images or embellishments. I invite you to check out the following pages for ideas:

• Garden Journal Pages: This page has information on how to put together October garden journal pages plus additional pages for the other months besides just October.
• Planner Layouts: Find Layout Ideas for Your Planners
• 7 Mood Tracker Ideas + a List of Moods for Your Bullet Journal, Planner or Calendar

October Scrapbooking and Journaling Ideas

You’ll miss out on seeing some of the world’s most inspiring scenery if you sit at home on your couch during the month of October. This is the time of year when the trees are showing off their most splendid color schemes. If you have a park or a hiking trail nearby, you can feast your eyes as you go for a stroll. You’ll want to grab a friend and your phone or camera and take photos of the all the beauty that you encounter along the way.

If you do that, then you’ll have the most important material you need for making autumn-themed scrapbooking layouts, mini books and art journal pages.

If any of these fall scrapbooking projects look interesting to you, you can click the photos to find more information about each one. If those ideas aren’t quite what you had in mind, you can check out this page of scrapbooking ideas to find a wider variety of projects.

October Holiday Crafts

”Oktoberfest,” ”Socktober” and “Socktoberfest”

Oktoberfest is an annual event that could be described as “a celebration of beer and beer-drinker’s culture.” This festival started in Germany but is now celebrated in many places around the globe.

For example, a few years ago, I celebrated Oktoberfest at Brian Head Resort in the mountains of Utah. Here’s a digital scrapbooking layout I made about that event:

If you’re celebrating Oktoberfest this year, I hope you’ll enjoy the festival; please feel free to use our scrapbooking ideas to create your own pages documenting your celebration.

Oktoberfest Spin-Offs

There are also some tongue-in-cheek spinoff events that playfully poke fun at Oktoberfest while also offering an alternative type of celebration.

Did you know that many homeless shelters are in dire need of socks? Many people donate to homeless shelters, but hardly anybody donates socks. So, lately, a lot of charity groups have been doing “Socktoberfest” drives encouraging people to donate socks.

If you’re a crafter who wants to join in the Soctoberfest fun, you could knit or crochet some socks to donate this month.

Socks make enjoyable and challenging craft projects, and October is an ideal time of year to work on making them. If you want to join in the sock-making fun, but you don’t already have sock patterns you can work from, you’re invited to check out this page of suggestions for the best sock knitting books. You might also be interested in picking up some fingering weight yarn, which is also known as “sock yarn” or “sock weight yarn.”

Where to Donate Handmade Socks or Other Handmade Projects You Knit, Crochet, Sew, Quilt or Make for Charity

I think it’s always prudent to donate your projects locally if that’s possible to do, but many crafters have found that their local organizations don’t want handmade goods. (I just shake my head at that. It’s infuriating to me, but true!)

So in that situation, I think Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation is a fantastic place to consider sending your handmade donations. These folks gratefully accept handmade goods as donations, and they put them to excellent use.

I don’t typically send them socks, but I try to send them donations of all kinds of warm things like hats, scarves and blankets. They are my go-to recommended charity for donating handmade goods to. I chose them for two reasons. First, it breaks my heart knowing that there are people in their community who freeze to death each year because their shelter is insufficient to protect them from the harsh, cold winters in their region. And, second, it is really easy to work with them.

Winter is fast approaching, and any donations you choose to send them will make a real and tangible difference in the lives of your projects’ recipients.

But no judgement from me if you don’t want to donate your handmade socks or other articles of warm clothing. I am well acquainted with that old saying, “Charity begins at home,” and I
totally get that it does have a basis in reality.

Not to mention the fact that Christmas will be here before you know it, and you might need to use your time this month for crafting Christmas gifts to give to your inner circle. So that’s another option we should discuss.

Christmas Crafting in October

If you celebrate Christmas, perhaps you have a mile-long list of people on your gift list who could use new socks, fingerless gloves, hats, scarves, blankets or other handmade goodies. You still have plenty of time to whip up some unique, one-of-a-kind Christmas gifts for your loved ones before the holiday rush starts.

• Check out Christmas craft ideas HERE.
• Take a look at my top picks for the best Christmas craft books HERE.
• Find Christmas gift guides HERE.

Halloween Crafts

I’ll be the first to admit that Halloween isn’t really my thing; I’m not into creepy, crawly, scary, horrifying things at ALL. So if you’re hoping to find a huge variety of Halloween crafts, this site probably isn’t going to satisfy your cravings for those. You’ll probably want to seek inspiration elsewhere. But, I do have a few project ideas and suggestions you could take a look at:

• Find knit and crochet skull patterns HERE.





• Check out the book Beastly Crochet, which isn’t specifically a Halloween pattern book, but it has soooooooooooooooooooooooo many Halloween-friendly projects that you will definitely want to check it out if Halloween crafting is your jam.





• Some craft projects that weren’t intended to be Halloween projects could become Halloween projects with a few quick color changes.
  
  For example, check out these holiday scarf patterns. I crocheted multiple samples that are mostly the same except for the colors; there’s a Christmas version, a Fourth of July version, and a Valentine’s Day version. I never made a Halloween sample for this particular design, but I’m sure that you can easily see how you could re-color it for Halloween if you’re so inclined. Just change the red, white and green into black, white and orange, and voila, you’ll have a Halloween scarf.

Find More Fall Craft Ideas to Carry You Through the Months of October, November and Beyond

The projects posted above are just a small sampling of the ideas posted on this website. I’ve put together a list of fall crafts that are seasonally appropriate for October and November crafting in many regions of the Western hemisphere.

Of course, if you are in Australia, you’re likelier to need spring project ideas right now, so I offer you this list of spring ideas instead.

For even more ideas, you’re invited to check out our main index of craft project ideas. Happy crafting!!

By Amy Solovay

You’re invited to subscribe to my newsletter!

If you’d like to be alerted when I post new crochet patterns and other craft content, please enter your email address into the widget below to subscribe to my newsletter!

(And if you have Gmail, please be sure to check your promotions tab regularly, because that is where the newsletters will most likely end up.) Thank you so much for your subscription! I appreciate your interest in my work.