Pumpkin Love

I just love it when inspiration for a project and completion of the project are just hours apart. So often, especially with me, projects take weeks to go from an idea to a completed project...

But not this one. Or should I say, these ones...

Meet my little collection of pumpkins. I know, they aren't orange... I do have some orange fabric, and I'll make a few orange pumpkins, but these neutral tones, this mix of textures, they were my original vision that I just had to go with.

Here is how they started - by finding this silly little red fabric apply while shopping for supplies for another project at JoAnn's on Saturday.

I picked it up - and thought "too bad this wasn't a pumpkin."

Muahahaha...

Over to the remnant section I went to find all sort of wonderful textured neutral fabrics. I'll admit it, I didn't say limited to the remnant section, I did buy a few off the bolt... But I have another project to make use of all the scraps to it was well worth it.

Here is how I made my little collection of pumpkin love...

Materials:

• Fabric
• Paper (to make your pattern)
• Tread
• String, twine or yarn
• Sharpie, marker or pen
• Fabric scissors
• Paper scissors
• Streamers
• 2 buttons (per pumpkin)
• LONG needle. I mean LONG - The one I used was 4".
• You can ignore the twig pictured above, I thought I was going to use it. I didn't. 
• Hot glue (not pictured)
• Pins (not pictured)
• Polyfil (not picture)

Step 1 - Create your paper pattern. You'll need 6 pieces of fabric exactly the same size and shape, so create a pattern from a piece of paper:

1B - Fold the paper in half corner to corner. (This just maximizes the size of the paper, you're really welcome to fold it anyway you please... go ahead... go wild with the way you fold your paper. As long as it is in half.)

1C - Draw an arc along the fold.

1D - Cut the arc and open it to reveal your pattern shape. (Please use paper scissors... Don't ruin your sewing scissors on paper... don't do it.)

Step 2 - Pin the pattern to your fabric and cut 6 identical pieces. Depending on your quality of scissors you might be able to get all 6 of your pieces cut at once.

Step 3 - Pin the fabric in pairs, right sides together.

Step 4 - Sew the pairs, right sides together down the right arc.

Step 5 - With the 3 pairs sewn together, take 2 of the pairs and sew them together, right sides together.

Step 6 - Add the 3rd pair and sew it to the first 2, right sides together, being sure to leave about a 2-3" gap so you can turn it right side out.

Step 7 - Flip the fabric right side out and stuff the sucker full of stuffing. Hand sew the whole shut... (my least favorite part of any project where hand sewing is involved.)

Step 8 - Time to take this ball we've created (pictured above) and turn it into a pumpkin. Thread a button on the bottom of the ball where the 6 pieces some together. Then push the long needle through to the other side. I needed a pair of pliers to pull the needle through.

Then push the needle back down to the bottom of the pumpkin pulling the string as tight as you can so that the top and bottom buttons come together a bit and pucker the pumpkin.

It will look a bit like this:

Step 9 - Now it is time to make the ridges along the sides of the pumpkin by taking the string from top to bottom, around the button, then back from bottom to top, around the button and so on and so on. You can either evenly space the string, or you can vary it - whatever works for you.

Step 10 - Create a stem and tendrils out of the streamers and hot glue them to the top.

And there you - pumpkins!!!