 are you ready for fall? All right, so this is an interesting little collection of stuff. I do think before I moved I had more of these. Where are they? I have no idea. I can't find them. These are all the ones I could find. So I don't know. I don't know. These are obviously little pumpkins. I used to be in an artist cooperative type shop. You know, one of those shops that we've all probably done, if you've been creative for a while, where you rent a booth space and then sell your wares to the public. Myself and one of the other ladies in the shop, the store owner actually, used to make these little pumpkins. Every fall we sold a million of them and we both did them very differently and I'm even going to change it up a little bit now. This is one I made. This is one she made. She did this one and she did this one. And they're very different but they're a lot of fun. There's no right way or wrong way to decorate these and I'm going to go over a few little things and then I'm going to actually show you how to make the pumpkins. So you can see on this one that I made, this is cotton, orange cotton fabric and orange embroidery floss. I've decorated the top with some ivy leaves from some dollar store ivy, some colored green raffia and this is actually the same stuff I have to do the new ones with, which is paper covered stem wire. But you could use, this is one that my friend Cindy Simmons did. No, not Cindy Utter, Cindy Simmons. As she used a cinnamon stick, her leaf is made out of felt and then this is curly raffia for the vines. This big one that she did has some autumn berries on it, some dollar store ivy, a rolled up piece of felt for the stem and then a bow. So you really could do, decorate them a lot of different ways. This one also is sewn and gathered, whereas these are wrapped with cord. So they're all a little bit different and you could do them any, I mean, there's a million different ways. I want to spruce up my collection. Like I said, I do think I used to have a little bit more of them, but I can't find them. So we're going to make a few new ones. So we're going to push those aside over that way. The first thing we're going to do is make leaves. Now I'm going to make my leaves out of felt. I got three colors of green felt. The first thing I'm going to do is make a couple of patterns. So what I want to do is attach this print out of leaf shapes that I found at random on the internet. So just, you know, go to Google and type in pumpkin leaves, find a shape of one that you like and print it to the size that you think you're going to need for your pumpkins. I'm going to, this is photo paper because it's, I don't know what it printed on, which was weird, but that's okay. I'm going to glue the photo paper to the subchip board or cardboard. And then I'm going to cut it out because I want it to be a little stiffer. So I only really need two of these. So I want this one. And then I think I want one of these little ones up here. So then I'm going to put my glasses on so I can see what I'm doing. I'm going to cut this out. Now I'm going to take our felt. We're going to take the sticker off. Depending on where you buy the felt and when you buy it and if it's on sale, it'll cost you anywhere between 25 cents and 50 cents a sheet. You're going to be able to get a lot of leaves out of one of these sheets. I think I'm going to start with this color. So I'm going to just take a ballpoint pen and I'm going to trace out a few of these leaves on each color. So you want to do something like that. I'm going to do all three pieces of felt and I'll be right back. When you cut them out, make sure you cut all the black lines off. See, cut all the black lines off so that you're left with this. That's all you want. All right. So I'm going to do the whole stack. I'll be right back. Okay. It's actually the next day. Fun fact. Anyway, here are our leaves all stitched up and it just adds a little something extra to them. I have to stitch them. Oops, where are we? There we are. You could leave them plain. You could draw some veins on. I do think it's a nice little touch though that I didn't do before on the other ones and neither did my friend Cindy Simmons. So anyway, here's those. Now we're going to get our fabric. I double checked a few stashes in the house and talked to my husband last night. He does also think we had a lot more of these little pumpkins. We probably purged them when we were moving, which I really don't think I wanted to do, but it is what it is. So I'm going to make some new ones. I do have a lot of orange ones and I was thinking to myself when I was thinking about this video that of course I'd like to make new ones as I said, but you know, why do they have to be orange? They could be all sorts of shades of orange or rust, of course. They could be, though, where they could be red. They could be cream. What about teal? Teal would be pretty. These aren't real pumpkins, so we're not going to eat them. So I wanted to modern them up a little bit. I will also tell you if you're doing fall arts and craft shows, when I was doing them, which has been a while, but when I was doing them, these were one of the things that were a good seller. So we didn't charge much for them. I think they were like, I don't know, I want to say $2.95 or $3.95 a pumpkin. They weren't very much and they didn't cost very much to make, but especially if you get all your parts at the fabric store, I mean at the dollar store, except for the fabric and if you use fat quarters or clearance fabric for the fabric. So anyway, so I have this range of colors. These are all fat quarters, which is, if you don't know what a fat quarter is, it's half of a half of a yard of fabric. So a fat quarter is usually a big square, like 16 by 20-ish like that. So that's a good size piece of fabric to do this with. So, and we can probably layer a few of these at once. I don't think you're going to be able to see the whole piece of fabric on camera, but that's okay. I have some circle patterns, different sizes for different pumpkins. I do think this is the size about for this pumpkin. Again, it's been a while, but I think, yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the size for that pumpkin and the slightly smaller one is about that. And you're going to ask me how big these are. So this one is six-ish inches across, six and an eighth. This one is eight and a half. And this one, a big one is almost 11. It's like an eighth of an inch shy of 11 inches. To make a circle pattern, go look for some bowls in the kitchen and turn them upside down on a piece of cardboard or cardstock or an old cereal box. This is chipboard from probably rubber stamp, a shipment of rubber stamps that got in stock for the Etsy store. This is old retail signage from my days as a greeting card merchandiser, as is this. So, yeah, use what you have. All right, so I want to make different size pumpkins. So I think I'm going to use all three of these. And we are going to layer a few fabrics on top of each other. You want to make sure your fabrics, at least the top fabric, is right sides up because we're going to draw on it and trace around our patterns. You want to make sure that your fabric is even-ish. There's not too wrinkly underneath. I wouldn't probably do more than three or four of them. I think more than that might be hard to cut. I'm going to do three, four. Maybe we'll do four. I'll do all the teals and I'll do all the oranges. You're going to want a black pen to do the tracing. And then lay out your patterns. Try not to get this white selvage edge right here. We don't want that. So I'm going to keep it about an inch from the edge. And I'm going to put my patterns in a way that I'm not wasting a bunch of fabric. Now, if I was making these for a show, I would fill up this whole piece of fabric and cut the whole thing out. I'm not going to do that because I don't need that many pumpkins. But I'm going to take a pen. This is just my favorite big crystal. And I'm going to trace around my cardboard and make a circle. Now, if you're doing mixed media or you're doing some sort of like scrap quilt or something, then don't throw these little scraps away because you can probably do something else with them. Okay, like that. And then we're going to cut them out. Now I have lots of different kinds of fabric scissors. I'm not sure these are going to cut through all these layers of fabrics, but I do have ones that will. So let's see. Oh, no, they do. They work well. So then just cut around your pen mark, except you need to get all the layers of fabric. Did I get them all? Oh, I did. Okay. You're going to need a lot of stuffing for this. If you're doing it on a budget, you could use stuffing from old pillows. Use your coupons to buy stuffing at the fabric store. You know, make sure to use your 40% off coupon, which, honestly, I was at the fabric store yesterday and I forgot to do because, you know, do as I say and not as I do. Hello. So I'm going to cut all my circles out and I'll be right back. Okay, so the next things you're going to need are some strong thread recording and a needle and something to stuff your pumpkins with. And I need my reading glasses because, you know, my eyes are old and tired. All right, that's good. We're going to just start with a medium one. With the wrong side of the fabric facing up, I'm going to run a basting stitch all the way around the outside edge. So I'm going to thread my needle and I'm going to, this is buttonhole twist, which is pretty strong thread, but I am going to double it up. I could do a single layer, but I'm going to double it up because we're going to pull tight on this. And this piece of thread is important. So I'm going to take the two cut ends and I'm going to time in or not that aside. So by wrong side up, I mean this is the back side of the fabric. This is the pretty side, right? So we want to have the back side up. This is the pretty side. This is like a batik print, so it's a little harder to tell, but this is the less pretty side, I think. They're both pretty close. On this particular one, I don't think it matters too much, which one do you like the colors more? I think they're both okay. I'm going to stick with my original intention. So we're going to just run a basting stitch about a quarter of an inch from the edge all the way around. And a basting stitch is just a large running stitch. Let me zoom in, hold on. For those that don't know what a basting stitch is, just a large running stitch doesn't have to be perfect. I'm using kind of a large big-eyed needle just because I do have some issue with my hands. Okay, so let's get back to it, shall we? So just go all the way around the edge of your circle. Just do it quickly. They don't have to be even at all. It doesn't matter if they're not even. Your stitches aren't even. But we're going to be putting a lot of pressure on this thread when we form our pumpkin. So that's why you want to use a double layer of a strong thread. I do think when I made the originals, I might have used embroidery floss, which would probably also work. But any strong thread that you have will work. I wouldn't use regular sewing thread. I don't know if that's going to be strong enough. I think when you pull on it like we're going to, I think it might bust. When I'm planning pumpkins like this, one of the things I keep my eyes on when I'm out thrifting is going to the craft and sewing department and looking for half-used bags of polyfill or otherwise known as pillow stuffing. It's a great place to get it because you can get it like a big bag for a dollar and they're expensive at the fabric store. And again, don't do like I did yesterday. I was literally at the fabric store yesterday and I forgot to use my coupon, which was dumb. All right. So we're back at the end. Pull this out. There we go. Okay. We're going to just pull it a little bit until it forms a little like a bowl. Like that. Like that. Oops. There we are. Till we have this. Let's zoom out just a little bit. Yeah, like this. Okay. We're going to have this shaky camera. Okay. We're going to have this little bowl. Then we're going to take some pillow stuffing. I've got some old batting here left over from a project. I'm going to just rip it up into pieces. Use what you have. You probably could stuff these with like fabric scraps, although I don't know that I would actually do that. You could take old pillows apart. Maybe you wash the pillows first. And you want a fair amount of stuffing. I have a bunch of this batting that was given to me. This is a nice cotton batting, but I don't have the use for it at the moment. So we're going to use it to make pumpkins. So once you have a fair amount like that, then you want to pull your threads until you get a ball. And then we're going to tie it off. Hold it tight over here into a fold on the other side and hold. I'm going to do it again on the opposite side again. Pull and hold. And once you do that once or twice, it's going to stay. And once it feels like it's staying, do that one more time and then tie a knot. Make sure to pull it tight. There we go. Like that. I would tie it a couple times. So just like that. So you want to take all of your rounds of fabric and you want to do this to them. Now, you want it about like this. You don't want it stuffed too tightly that we can't do the next step to it. If it's stuffed too tightly, when we go to wrap the threads around it to create the sections of the pumpkin, then it's not going to want to like push in and create your pumpkin shape. So do this to all of your rounds and then we'll be right back. Okay, so you can see here off to my left that I have my embellishments all sorted out, grouped one for each pumpkin. And the larger pumpkins are going to get a little bit more than the smaller ones, obviously. Each one's going to get at least one leaf. So and the hot glue gun is heating up over that way. You will need a hot glue gun. You could do this with like tacky glue, but hot glue will dry faster and you'll be a little less frustrated. And if you don't own a hot glue gun, they do sell them at the dollar store. I don't necessarily see them all the time there, but I do see them there. And I would recommend if you're doing this for like a fall craft show that you probably look for your embellishments at the Dollar Tree or your local dollar store and shop for the fabric. When it's on sale, a lot of times fat quarters will go on sale. I used to when I was, well back in the day when I was making these for shows, I would wait until the fat quarters went on sale for 99 cents. I don't think they do that anymore, but I do think you can see them often for like a dollar 49 or a dollar 99. You can also do this with clearance cotton. These are just cotton blend fabrics quilting cottons. So you could peruse the clearance department of your fabric store and when they have appropriate fall colors on clearance, oranges and things like that, you could just buy a half a yard then and that gives you two fat quarters if you get half a yard and you can get a minimum of like probably 12 pumpkins. So anyway, then I'm going to take my courting. This is some of my hemp courting and I'm going to leave a good like three inch tail up here in the center where we did the gathering. I'm going to just hold it there with my thumb and then I'm going to wrap and pull just a little bit tightly. Then I'm going to go the other way. Then I'm going to go the other way. Then I'm going to go the other way. Now you can do this as I said before with matching courting. Embroidery floss works. I've done these with embroidery floss plenty of times. Before you tie it off, fluff it a little bit. Make sure your pumpkin segments are sort of evenish. Tie this in a knot once you get that first knot in there. You can let go and then trim them short. That works. It's starting to look like a pumpkin. So I'm going to do that to all of them while the glue gun is heating up. I'll be right back. Okay, I'm on the last one as far as the wrapping is concerned. So again, you want to get two or three inches in your hand. Put your thumb here in the center where the gathers are and you want to wrap around once. Then turn it and then wrap it again halfway. So now you have divided in fourths. Then you want to divide each one of those fourths in half, turning it as you go to keep all of those threads in the center, or strings, whatever you're using, and then tie it in a knot. You do need a little bit of manual dexterity for this. Oops, tie it really well. Then trim it off and then turn it over and just fluff it, straighten your threads so that your pumpkin segments are about even. Give it a squish so that it's kind of brownish. Any errors in the pumpkin are like flog parts like this right here and I'll put leaves or something there. Okay, so now we've got all of our pumpkins ready for embellishments and the hot glue gun is ready to go. I've got a bunch of glue sticks out. So each pumpkin is going to get two or three berries, a little piece of the paper wrapped wire stem material from the floral apartment at the fabric store, one leaf, and I have a little piece of quilling paper that I curled that it's going to go on here too. So we are going to start with the littlest pumpkins, I think. And by the way, I forgot how hard these little pumpkins were to do. Yeah, I forgot. The bigger the pumpkin, the easier it is for the wrapping and everything. The littler the pumpkin, the more challenging it is. All right, so the first thing I'm going to do is glue a stem on and just put hot glue right in the middle. Put the stem in. The glue is still hot, which it is, and put some berries in. And not only is the idea to get your pumpkin so that it looks more like a pumpkin because of the embellishments, but also to cover up the gathers and the glue and everything else. Paper, stick that down too. And then how cute is that? So yeah, I like it. All right, so I'm going to do all the pumpkins and I'll be back. 25 pumpkins, 24 I think. I think I've pumpkined out for a while. I did used to have a lot of these pumpkins around the house and like I said, I've only got six. I don't know that made it on the move, which would be these original ones, which is fine. I'll mix them in with these new ones. But these are a lot of fun to make. You can of course get that pre-made little cloth pumpkins and then just decorate the tops. But if you're going to do them for a fall craft show and sell them, that's probably not the most cost-efficient way to do it. So pumpkins, whether you're making them for yourself or your house or you're making them for sale, think about how you can take some craft like this, an old-fashioned vintage craft, if you will, and modern it up a little bit. I love the teal pumpkins. I think this cotton flower print is my favorite. But how can you make the pumpkins more modern by color and maybe even do something different for the decorations on the top? I like something that's at least reminiscent of an actual pumpkin, but you could do anything. So see what you can do. You could also maybe put a little wire holder on the top to hold a place card and use these as the little ones as place cards at Thanksgiving on the table as name cards. That would be cute. Anyway, pumpkins, think about it. All right, so this is it for today. If you would like any of the information or materials, anything that's relevant, I will link in the description below. If you want to follow me on social media and see what kind of creative endeavors I get up to on a daily basis or support the free content here on YouTube or over in the art groups on Facebook, click on the link tree list of links and you're going to find all the different places on the internet. You can find me and places you can support me. 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