Another pumpkin - but a very cute one!

I'm hoping you'll put up with one last variation on my wonky pumpkin - it is a very cute variation, and I think my favourite so far.

It was inspired by these pumpkins on Pinterest

Find it on my Autumn Board

I thought it would be great to try a longer lasting, fabric version of these. So I needed to make a mouse hole for my pumpkin. I started out with a simple rounded triangle of my darker orange wool.

And then rolled it up into a cone shape...

I stitched around the bottom join on the machine - machine sewing is so much quicker - and then hand sewed a few stitches up the inside of the join just to make it good and secure. It also looked a bit long and pointy at this stage for what I wanted, so I machine stitched straight across about an inch up from my pointy end, to square it off and shorten it.

I cut out my 5 petal shapes, as per my instructions for the first pumpkin (here), and then drew around my mouse hole opening on one of these 'petals...

And then cut out this circle.

Next I blanket stitched the mouse hole on to my 'petal' in the circle I'd just created...

And then I just carried on as I have with the previous pumpkins, sewing wrong sides together for each of the pumpkin 'petals' so the seams are showing and sticking out, I just had to be careful not to catch the mouse hole on the inside as I sewed.

This is how it looked all sewn up. With this one I left a slight hole at the bottom as well as the top to help me stuff it from both ends. The stuffing was slightly more fiddly because I wanted to keep the mouse hole area hollowed out, but it worked pretty well if I kept a couple of fingers poked into the hole as I stuffed, and made sure I stuffed from both the ends and worked it around the hole tunnel.

Then I added a stalk and a leaf as before, and here it is...

A pumpkin with a ready made mouse hole. All it was waiting for was a mouse in need of a home...

And would you believe it, along came a mouse...

Had a bit of a sniff all over, and decided that he quite fancied this pumpkin, and moved in...

The mouse is a very straightforward finger puppet, so was really easy to put together. I made him in grey wool with a bit of pink and some emboidery for detail. He tucks in and out very easily, I think Maria is going to love this pumpkin! I love it too.

These pumpkins have been lots of fun to make and I'm already thinking we'll enjoy them year after year come Autumn time, just as we do Christmas decorations. I've made them all out of wool from recycled blankets, but if you don't happen to have quite the same obsession of collecting old wool blankets from charity shops (what's wrong with you?!) then I'm sure they would work with a reasonably good quality felt, ideally one with a good wool content.

So which is your favourite?

Back tomorrow with a photo, Sally.