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.



More Autumn!

I've Autumnified another little corner of our home!

The cushion I made ages ago but it's just been sitting in one of my sewing piles unused. It's a replica of a shop bought one we have - you can never have too many owls! And the colours seemed perfect for Autumn so it finally got stuffed and put out on a chair.

Here's the rest of the corner...

A little cross stitch mouse - not made by me. Cross stitch is something I haven't so far tried. I found this little mouse in a charity shop, and he, again, seemed good to go for Autumn.

This was another charity shop find from quite a while back, and another cross stitch one. Can you see it has 'Autumn' embroidered at the bottom? Perfect! And lovely oak leaves and acorns in just the right Autumn colours. There were two pictures in the shop at the time, this one and a 'Spring' version as well, again in cross stitch and again with a bird. I bought them originally thinking that I'd put them up in my 'bird' area - ie the cat's room, but I never got round to it and now 'Autumn' seems just right here. Sadly, there were no 'Winters' or 'Summers' in the shop, perhaps whoever made them got a bit bored after two cross stitches. So I shall have to think of what I might want to hang in this space for those other two seasons.

These blocks really ought not to be in my Autumn space, I'm sure I could think of lots more appropriate things to put there instead. But they're very special to me and I can't bear to pack them away. I made them from a piece of driftwood that I found when I was walking on the beach with Sam last Autumn. It was really good to spend that time with just Sam, and it's a walk I'll always remember. The piece of wood was just big enough to make another set of blocks the same for Sam. And both have got the date, place and 'walking with Sam,' or 'walking with Mum,' burned on in smaller letters on the back. I'm not sure how much Sam appreciates them at the moment, but hopefully he'll keep them long enough until he is of a slightly more nostalgic age and does appreciate them even more.

I'd put my corner together to this extent when I realised what it really needed was, of course, another pumpkin! So I quickly whipped up another, smaller wool pumpkin (first one, with full pictures on how I made it here), this time with buttons as decoration.

And it is just what was needed!

We had a quick Autumn make at the weekend for one of our window areas too. Our garden is overflowing with apples at the moment, we are eating them like mad but I thought I'd try a making experiment with them too. I sliced a couple of them up thinly, laid them out on a plate and microwaved them for 30 seconds, then laid them out on a tea towel in the airing cupboard for a couple of days to dry. They worked better than I expected and we just threaded them together to make an apple dangly thingy!

Bit strange perhaps, but I kind of like it! Especially when the sun shines through them, the individual apple slices are surprisingly beautiful and each one unique.

I'm off back to crack on with my quilts again now, as ever it takes longer than I, optimistically, think to finish them. Don't forget to add your Autumn makes below too.

Back tomorrow, Sally.

Autumn Part 2 - Wonky Pumpkin

There are pumpkins all over Pinterest at the moment, I have a few on my Autumn board that I want to have a go at, but first I wanted to try and make one out of my favourite fabric - wool. With another of my favourites too - wool 'pennies'.

I cut these sort of petal shapes out a few days ago, and I've been looking at them since thinking they wouldn't work.

But last night I decided to try, and it actually came together surprisingly quickly and easily.

I just machine sewed the petals together, adding one after the other, with wrong sides flat together - I was sewing on the outside so the seams stick out and show.

Here it is just before I sewed on the last petal shape. For the last seam I left a little gap at the top so that I could poke the stuffing inside easily.

Here it is (above) all sewn and then (below) stuffed.

Now for the hand stitching. I cut out wool circles, in browns and a slightly lighter orange, and blanket stitched them on to each 'segment' of my pumpkin - you'll see them in place on the finished photos, I didn't stop to take pictures here, I was too cosily sitting snuggled under a quilt listening to the television at this point! Then I rolled up a small oblong of brown wool for a stalk and secured it with a few stitches, and then stitched down into the stuffing a few times to hold it in place - and it was go get a mug of hot chocolate and take a photo break here!

Nearly finished now. I just hand stitched up the top hole, going through the stalk a few times as I did to secure it a bit better - I have a feeling children will be picking up this pumpkin and twizzling it round by the stalk and probably throwing it around the room too, so it needed to be reasonably sturdy! (And there was a tiny gap where the 'petals' met at the bottom, not a visible hole but a hole where a finger could poke up and pull out the stuffing, so I stitched this up at the same time.) Last of all I cut out a leaf shape from some green wool, stitched a quick vein down the middle for detail, and then sewed it in place next to the stalk.

Here it is finished.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out. And it was very quick too - blanket stitching the pennies was the only part that took any time at all.

So it's going on my Autumn linky whatsit. I think I finally am starting to embrace Autumn, hope you are too and that you're in the mood for some Autumn crafting and making, please share your makes with us below.



I'll be back Monday, see you then, Sally.