We made felted pumpkins yesterday. These are very easy and great for young kids because they can do the entire project by themselves. You see my daughter chose non-traditional colors for her pumpkin embellishments (on the right). I will show you a few photos of how we did it, but I'm sure you all can figure it out. There are also many nice tutorials about different felted pumpkin projects; I'll add a few links at the end of this post.
Choose some wool roving. Wad it up into a ball. Then wet felt it, either by hand in a basin of warm, soapy water or in your washing machine. We felted ours in the machine, on a 25-minute cycle with warm water and a tablespoon of liquid detergent.
Let your felted orbs air dry (or toss them in the dryer, but be prepared for more felting and/or shrinkage) and assemble your other supplies. You'll need an embroidery needle, one or two colors of floss, and a scrap of green felt for each pumpkin.
Thread your needle with floss to make the "ribs" of the pumpkin. Knot the thread, and starting at what will be the bottom of the pumpkin, draw the needle all the way through the felted orb. Wrap the thread around the pumpkin and draw it back up again through the bottom of the pumpkin, continuing in this way to make as many ribs as you want. You can scoot the thread a bit to space the ribs as you like. Knot the thread at the bottom of the pumpkin when you are done.
Attach the stem by taking small, shallow stitches around the circumference of the stem into the top of the pumpkin. You can pull the final stitch all the way through the bottom of the pumpkin, and knot it.
Here are links to other felted pumpkin projects:
- A nice photo tutorial for a needle felted pumpkinon flickr.
- One made out of felt, written up in Italian (you can figure it out through the photos).
- Pumpkin bowls (and crocheted acorns!) at Resurrection Fern.
- Knitted and felted pumpkin pattern.
