Make a Pumpkin

Over on Splitcoast Stampers the October Guest Designer Challenge has been posted on the MFT Forum. The challenge is to use fabric in your design. The winner will receive the following month's releases and be invited to participate in the blog hop. That's pretty exciting, if you're interested in participating get cracking cause you need to upload your card to the gallery by October 6, 10PM EST.

I decided to make a couple fabric pumpkins, they make cute decorations to give or keep and they are so easy anyone can make them and they take about a half hour to make. Honest! I made these with brownies and if they can do it so can you.

You don't need a lot of fancy equipment, just a few things that if you're a crafty person you're likely to have on hand. A piece of fabric, stuffing (you can use cotton balls if you don't have stuffing on hand, I didn't have any fluff so I crunched up some old batting scraps) , a glue gun (if you don't one and can't borrow one use fabric glue), beans (I didn't have any beans so I used rice, you can use pebbles or anything that'll weight the bottom down a little) and a twig (I grabbed the first three I found outside my door, you can be as picky as you want) a needle and thread. You can decorate the pumpkins with anything you like or leave them plain. If I had some pipe cleaners I might've twisted one around the stem and curled it since I didn't have any on hand I'm settling for the tag on the big one and the ribbon on the little one. What you put on it is up to you.

The pumpkin with the tag on it is about 4 inches across at the bottom and the other one is about 3-1/2 inches at the bottom. For my templates I used dishes. The larger one was made with a dinner plate and the smaller one with a dessert plate. If you want a larger pumpkin just cut out a larger circle, try using a big round serving platter. The bigger the pumpkin the more stuffing you'll need. Trace the outline of the plate onto the fabric, and cut it out. You don't need to be precise because the edge doesn't show. Thread your needle and sew a gathering stitch around the edge, make it about a half an inch or so in. Pull it slighty so that you can put your weight medium inside then put your stuffing inside. Don't overstuff it. The larger the pumpkin the more you can get away with understuffing them. They look cute when they are a little bit floppy. Once your stuffing is inside you pull the gathering tight and tie it off with a knot. At this point I usually do a little extra stitches tacking the gathering in place but it probably doesn't matter at all because the next step is to use your glue gun put a glop (yes, that is the technical term, go ahead and look it up) on the center of the gathering and put your twig there. And Voila, there's your pumpkin, ready for whatever decorations you want to put on them.

I made a tag using the MFT "Fright Night" stamp set. It's colored in with copics and the edge is sponged with Ranger Peeled Paint and Memento Dandelion. The paper is from K & CO Tim Coffey's Halloween Specialty pad. The border is punched with the EK Success "Boo" punch. I tied it onto the twig with a ribbon it's ready to go.

Thanks for stopping by, please click on the pink ribbon before you go.