This year I had high hopes of growing my own pumpkins but unfortunately I planted them too close to what turned out to be a couple of very aggressive courgette plants so absolutely no pumpkins for me! Taking matters into my own hands I decided that I was going to make my very own fabric pumpkin patch as well as making a mental note to next year plant the pumpkins well away from the courgettes!

I think its fairly well acknowledged that when it comes to making fabric pumpkins Martha Stewart pretty much nailed the pumpkin tutorial and its a great place to start. But nevertheless I thought I’d share how I made my own little pumpkin patch.

The pumpkins will vary in height/width based on how you stuff them, my biggest pumpkin ended up at around 7 inches wide by 4 inches tall and my smallest was around 4.5 inches wide by 3 inches tall (excluding the stalk). The smallest pumpkin was definitely the easiest to make so if you are making these with the kiddos that is probably the best place to start.

Ingredients

Fabric – I used Orange Leaf from Vintage Happy by Lori Holt, Fox & Friends Cream Leaves by Lewis & Irene and Sevenberry Vintage Ditsy Flower Orange & Mint
Toy Stuffing
Needle & Thread
Embroidery Thread 
Knitters Needle
Felt – Chocolate, Grass Green, Holly Green
Beacon 3 in 1 Craft Glue

This is how I made my three pumpkins:

Cut your fabric:

Large fabric pumpkin : 21 inch x 10.5 inch

Medium fabric pumpkin: 19 inch x 9.5 inch

Small fabric Pumpkin: 15 inch x 7.5

1. Fold the fabric in half right sides together and sew the short sides together.

2. Knot your thread tightly then do a running stitch along one of the open sides, it wont be seen so it doesn’t need to be too neat.

3. Pull the thread tight so your fabric bunches up and secure. I tie a knot then wrap the thread around a couple of times, taking my needle and thread back through the gather and then knot off.

4. Turn your pouch out the right way and stuff full of toy stuffing

5. For the next step I used a double piece of thread (take a long piece of thread pop it on your needle make sure the two ends meet and tie a big knot). As before do a running stitch along the top of the opening. You will need to pull it tight once you get back to where you started and depending on how much stuffing you have used it may break if you don’t double up or use a strong thread.

6. Once you’ve done your running stitch pull tightly and secure with a knot and a couple of stitches through the gathers.

7. To form the pumpkin shape you will need about 2 metres of embroidery thread. I found a metre made 4 segments of a pumpkin and to get you pumpkin looking really pumpkiny you need 8 segments. Take your embroidery thread and a knitters needle, tie a knot at the end starting at what will be the base of the pumpkin. Push your needle through to the hole at the top of the pumpkin, this can be a bit tricky I found pushing the pumpkin down onto the needle made the needle easier to find. Once at the top of the pumpkin take the thread over the outside and back up through the bottom of the pumpkin and again to the top to form a segment.

Repeat on the opposite side, do this again so your pumpkins are in quarters. I then took another metre of thread and made each quarter into an eighth, doing it with two pieces of thread meant that you could adjust and pull your threads tighter or looser at the end when you had made all your segments. Tie the two threads together to secure.

8. For the stalk take a piece of felt approx 3inch by 8 inch for the large stalk, 7 inch x 2 inch for the medium stalk and 6 inch x 1.5 inch for the small stalk, roll the stalk up and glue the end in place with some Beacon 3 in 1 glue.

9. If you want to add leaves to your pumpkin cut a leaf shape measuring approx 1.5 inch wide by 3.5 inch long from the grass green felt and then cut a slightly larger leaf from the holly green felt, I then sewed around the leaf and up the middle on my sewing machine. (I made a smaller leaf for the smallest pumpkin)

10. If your pumpkins are going to be man handled by little people stitch your stalk and leaf to the centre of your pumpkin, since mine were more decorative I glued them in place using my Beacon glue.

Thats it finished pumpkin!

Happy pumpkin making!