More Fabric Pumpkins

Happy November everybody! I know many bloggers are moving into Christmas posts now that the calendar page has turned another month, but I am enjoying the fall too much to start Christmas crafts and decorating just yet. With Thanksgiving being a gentle reminder to have gratitude and be thankful for all of the blessings in your life, I just want to soak in these last few weeks and enjoy this time of reflection before some of the hustle and bustle of the next holiday season officially begins.

When I ended the post about how I created  a small fabric pumpkin patch for my glass scarecrow, I promised to show you how I created some other fabric pumpkins. 

Two of the pumpkins are "no sew" crafts, and the last one requires a minimal amount of sewing. The first pumpkin has a really unusual base....a roll of toilet paper. I read about how to make these pumpkins on Debbie-Dabble's Home and Garden Blog. Debbie loves Christmas but goes all out for other holidays as well, and when I saw these cute pumpkins that she made using rolls of toilet paper and small amounts of fabric, I knew I had to try making one. For this craft take an inexpensive roll of toilet paper and a piece of fabric (I had 1/4 yard of plaid fabric, but didn't need that much).

Simply place your roll of bathroom tissue in the center of your fabric square.

Then pull up the fabric and tuck it into the center of the roll, sort of pleating the fabric as you go along. I used the handle of a small screw driver to tightly push the fabric down as the tube became more full.

Once completed, I wrapped twine around a piece of thin cardboard that I rolled up. I placed some hot glue on the end and inserted it into the center of the tube to act as a pumpkin stem.

Finally, I embellished it with some silk leaves I had in my stash of craft supplies.

The next "no sew" pumpkin was made using the sleeves of an old sweater, some jute twine and some cotton fiberfill stuffing.

I've seen these all over pinterest, but I turned to  a post that Kim at Curtain Queen Creates did last year about creating pumpkins from shirt sleeves as a guide.  For this pumpkin I cut part of one of the sweater sleeves about 10 inches long and then turned it inside out. I cut 6 strands of twine about 36 inches long and knotted them together, placing them inside the knit "tube" with the knot of twine remaining outside the tube. Then I twisted a rubber band around the sweater and twine slightly above the knot.

 At this point, I turned the sleeve "right side out". This will cause the knot of your twine to be inside the pumpkin. The area where the twine comes out of the fabric will ultimately be the bottom of your pumpkin.

Now you need to stuff the pumpkin with the fiberfill, making it as plump as you would like. Then firmly grasp the remaining tube of sweater above the stuffing and attach another rubber band to keep it secure.

Now bring the strands of twine up from the bottom, spacing them as evenly as possible and wrap them around the the top to form the pumpkin stem. Trim any extra parts of the sweater that are left above your twine wrapped stem.

To finish the pumpkin I twisted a piece of the jute twine, tied a piece of raffia around the stem and glued on a few leaves.

The final fabric pumpkin requires minimal sewing. For this one I cut a rectangle of burlap and sewed the long sides together using 1/4 inch seam allowance to create a tube just like the sweater sleeve. Following the same procedure as I did with the sweater sleeve above, I created a similar pumpkin out of burlap.

All of these pumpkins were inexpensive and rather easy to make. They are adding a cozy touch throughout our home this fall and are a fun way to add some autumnal colors indoors.

Fabric Pumpkin Patch

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you are having a wonderful day with all of your little trick or treaters. Today I am going to share more about the little fabric pumpkins I have been showing peeks of in some of my photos. Have you ever made fabric yo yos?  They are a simple little craft that you make with scraps  of fabric. In the past frugal women saved all of their fabric scraps and made blankets out of hundreds of yo yos. I must admit that I have not been ambitious enough to make a project that large, but  I have used them to make garlands or embellish wrapped packages.
To make a yo yo, you simply sew a running stitch around the circumference of a fabric circle about 1/4 inch from the edge.  When you reach the end of the circle you simply pull and gather the circle together. A few years ago a co worker told me about a template that you can actually use to assure even stitching of the yo yos, and I use it when making mine. These templates come in different sizes to you can vary the size of the yo yos you create for your craft projects.

 After making my scarecrow out of glass blocks, I couldn't resist making a pumpkin patch for him to protect and oversee. I decided that using fabric yo yos would create the perfect sized pumpkins for his patch. For some of the pumpkins I simply made the yo yos in the traditional way.

I then stacked several of the completed yo yos on top of each other and stitched them together.

Using a dab of hot glue, I adhered a small stick into the hole of the top yo yo to serve as a pumpkin stem, and then tied a few strands of straw raffia around the stick.

To add dimension to the field of pumpkins, I decided to make some fuller rounded gourds by stuffing the yo yos as I started to gather the stitiches.

Once I had the desired amount of stuffing in my pumpkin, I finished pulling the gathering stitches tight and then knotted it off. I then added the stem and raffia or even some strands of fine jute string as a finishing touch. The combination of stuffed and stacked yo yo pumpkins added a nice variety to the "field".

 

I had so much fun creating these tiny pumpkins that I decided to make some larger "no sew" pumpkins too. 

I'll share how I made those in my next post. The great thing about all of these fabric pumpkins is that while they are perfect for Halloween decorating, they can be left out through Thanksgiving to add a  handmade festive seasonal touch to your fall decorating.

Linking with:
Cedar Hill Farmhouse
Saving 4 Six
The 36th Avenue
Pieced Pastimes
The Crafted Sparrow
Between Naps on the Porch
Katherine's Corner
A Delightsome Life