Fabric Pumpkins Tutorial

Looking for an easy DIY pumpkin? Look no further! Here’s a cute way to make them out of fabric. You could even have an older child make or help make them.

To get started you’ll need orange fabric (cutting instructions below), leaves cut from green fabric (felt or fleece would be ideal), 2″ piece of stick, embroidery floss, heavy duty thread and needle, a glue gun, brown or tan raffia, and a sewing machine (optional).

1. Cut your orange fabric into a rectangle. For a rounder pumpkin, the length should be 2 times the width (ex. 10″ wide by 20″ long). For a slightly squattier pumpkin, the length should be 2.5 times the width (ex. 10″ wide by 25″ long).

2. Fold the orange fabric lengthwise with right sides together. Use a sewing machine or hand stitch along the open edge.

3. With right sides still together, gather up the fabric at one of the openings and tie securely with embroidery floss. A rubber band rather than floss could also work but may not be as durable over several years.

4. Turn the pumpkin right side out. Loosely hand stitch around the opening of the pumpkin with a 3/8″ seam allowance with stitches around 1/4″ wide. Use a heavy duty thread so it doesn’t break when you pull it in step 6. Leave loose tails hanging off at both the beginning and the end and don’t tie any knots.

5. Fill the pumpkin with stuffing until it is fairly firm.

6. Pull the ends of the thread stitched around the top until the opening is closed or nearly closed and tie several knots. Trim off the long ends of the thread.

7. Take your embroidery floss and tie a tight circle around the pumpkin and leave around a 6″ tail. (For reference, I needed about 4 feet total of embroidery floss for a pumpkin that used the fabric measurements of 10″ x 20″).

8. Next, wrap the long piece of the embroidery floss twice around the pumpkin diagonally from your first line so there are six total segments. Tightly tie the string to the tail left from step 7.

9. Use your glue gun to make a large dot of glue in the top center of the pumpkin. I’m using white glue so you can see it in the photo but clear would be best. Press your stick into the hot glue.

10. Use the hot glue gun to attach your leaves.

11. To finish, wrap a piece of  raffia around the base of the stem to hide any excess glue.

12. After this step you can call it finished, or you (or kids!) could cut jack o’lantern faces out of felt and hot glue them to the pumpkins.

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42 comments

  25. Just wanted you to know that I think your tutorial and end result is the best one out there on the web! I’d pinned your to my fall board a couple of days ago, but just got around to trying it out today. Thank you so much for sharing!!! 🙂

    Reply

  27. What a fantastic tutorial – I now know what my daughter and her friend will be doing tomorrow at her play date. Thanks for posting this!! I will post on my blog and link back this weekend :-))

    Reply

  30. Thanks again for the tut – I posted a pic, and a link back to this post today – along with a fat quarter giveaway that I am hosting – we had an absolute blast making these pumpkins!

    Reply

  38. Thank you so much for sharing. These turn out cute and still look good if you have to piece your rectangle together. I made fatter pumpkins by going about 1:3, for example 10″ x 30″.

    Also, in Step 3, you can use a rubber band to hold the gathers together while you wrap the embroidery floss (I used button-carpet thread) around the bottom of the pumpkin.

    Reply

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