~DIY Fabric Pumpkins~

A DIY Craft Tutorial

Are you feeling crafty? This tutorial is so easy that you won't believe it! I love the fall season for so many reasons! The weather is still a comfortable temp but with a crispness in the air, the beautiful colors of the leaves on the trees and the anticipation of the upcoming holidays. But my number one favorite reason? Pumpkin, everything!!! There's pumpkin muffins, pumpkin spice latte's, decorating pumpkins.....well, you get the idea! Most people decorate with pumpkins for Halloween, but I've noticed this year that a lot of fall decorating has been done with mini white pumpkins like we did for our dining room. If you missed our Fall Home Tour, you can find the post here, for some fall decorating ideas.

We added a little grapevine wreath and moss for our little pumpkins to nest on! :)

My favorite kinds of pumpkins for decorating are white pumpkins or gray Cinderella pumpkins that I bought this year for my front porch!

Y'all know how much I love gray too!

Whether you decorate with bright colored or muted colored pumpkins, this tutorial is great because you can customize it for your home decor!

I obviously used more creams for my pumpkins but the possibilities are endless with this craft. I hope that any of you that try this tutorial will share your DIY fabric pumpkins with me so I can see all your creativity at work!

Let's get started!

Here is the list of things you will need for this craft:

Fabric

Trim like ribbons, burlap, or rick rack

Stems like cut branches or wood trim pieces

Hot glue gun

Needle and thread

Poly fill stuffing

The first step in this tutorial is to cut the fabric you want to use. I used round objects to trace my fabric into circular shapes like pizza pans, plates, and bowls to achieve different sizes.

Next, we used the needle and thread to make a gathering stitch around the perimeter of the circular fabric. This is what a gathering stitch looks like if you haven't used it before. Starting your thread and knotting it on the end, make sure your first stitch is inserted from the inside out to your pumpkin like this:

Next, you will weave the needle in and out of the fabric three or four times before pulling the thread through. Make sure to alternate the in and out of the needle and don't insert the needle on the same side more than once.

By using this method, the fabric gathers all the way around the perimeter making it into a pumpkin shape that you can later fill with your poly-fill stuffing.

Important Note: Once the gathering stitch has gone all the around the pumpkin, the thread is still attached to the fabric and should remain that way until after you have stuffed your pumpkin. The reason for this is that the opening will become widened after you stuff it. By leaving the thread attached while stuffing, you can re-gather the stitch tight to knot it and clip it off. You also may need to work the fabric around to ensure the gathering is even all the way around your pumpkin before knotting the thread. Now you are ready to fill your pumpkin. We used this Poly-fil to stuff our pumpkins but you could use all kinds of things for stuffing if you choose something else.

You will want to leave an opening of the pumpkin large enough to insert your stem. We used cut branches off of one of our small trees in the yard. I ended up sanding it down a little as it wasn't the most even cut. You will hot glue the stem in place. You still may have a little larger opening or see the stitching where we gathered the fabric at this point, which we will cover up with trim or cut fabric.

This is also another time to get creative with your stem and trimmings. We used frayed twine and burlap ribbon and fabric to conceal the openings around the stem.

Here is a finished look at our fabric pumpkins!

This is so much fun to do and it would also be a great craft to do with kids!

We placed them on our coffee table but they can be used anywhere to decorate for the fall season. I hope you enjoyed this fun crafty tutorial.

Next time, we will be showing you a look at some of our antique treasure finds we have gathered for our booth space to refurbish, as well as a updated look at our living room and kitchen. I will be posting updated pictures under the Home Tour page on our blog! We have made several updates to the blog this week, like more before and after pics of some of our more recent furniture makeovers. You can find those new pictures on the "Before & Happily Ever After" page on our website or click here to take a peek now.

We also re-painted our living room and kitchen areas this last weekend end and I think I am finally happy with it! For those of you that are new to the blog, this would be the third time I have repainted the kitchen and the second time for the living room. Both times, we were going for soft grays that ended up looking too blue in our house. I will say in my defense, that grays are hard! :)

But finally, this gray is the right one!