Hello October! Fabric Pumpkins , Leather Leaves

Hard to believe it's October already yet here it is. Even though I'm not a Pumpkin Spice fan, I do love to decorate with pumpkins from Halloween through Thanksgiving. I've had fabric pumpkins on my to make list and finally made some! 

October Lettering Doodle

Everything's new when it's the first time you do it right? My twist on these was to add leather leaves. 

Supplies: 

• Fabric of choice: I used my never ending fabric dropcloth from the HW store, and some black and white swirl fabric from my stash
• Embroidery thread and needle
• Fiberfill
• Leather Scraps
• Glue gun and glue sticks
• Jute Twine and Cotton Cord
• Charms
• Twigs

For the dropcloth pumpkins, I used a standard size dinner plate as my template. For the black and white pumpkin, I used a charger.

Trace your pattern and cut out your fabric:

Using embroidery thread, do a loose running stitch around the edge of your fabric, and then pull to gather together. 

I didn't care about the contrast in thread color because I knew I'd be covering up any exposed stitching. You'll have a little sac ( which reminded my of my favorite Taiwanese dumplings). 

Stuff your dumpling, I mean pumpkin, with fiber fill until you are happy with the size etc. I kind of rolled mine around to make sure the fiberfill was even. Then pull you stitching tight and tie off. 

I chose to do this step before adding my stem but I suppose you could add the stem and then do this. For the stems, I used a cedar branch I'd cut during the Summer that was now thoroughly dried. 

Leather Scraps

A while ago, for no specific reason, I bought a bag of leather scraps at Michaels or JoAnns. Now I knew the reason! I grabbed some coordinating colors and cut leaf shapes from them. 

I glued in the stem and attached the leaves and then used twine to wrap around the bottom of the stem and cover up my glue schlubs. I then added some ribbon and charms from my stash to finish. 

I used the same process for the black and white fabric pumpkin, only instead of wrapping the stem with twine, I used cotton cord and maple leaf charms insttead of hearts.