Making Pumpkins & Memories

My Dad's old orange shirts ... memories.

When I was cleaning out my Dad's dresser several years ago I found 3 orange stretchy vintage shirts - golf shirt, fleece shirt and a long sleeved 3 button shirt with a collar. 

I saved them, dreamed of making them into pumpkins and this week - I did.

The last of the roses and fall hydrangea with an orange pumpkin. Small dream. Dear memories. Orange was so 1960's.


Project: making cloth pumpkins

Supplies:

orange stretchy shirts
strong thread, needle, scissors, chalk
round dinner plate
pliers, scissor
thin long wire, pen
leaves, stem pieces

Sequence:

Lay shirt on table, make sure there are no wrinkles,
using a plate, trace around with chalk on the shirt, cut through both layers (back/front).

Repeat with each shirt.

Double thread needle with strong thread, knot the end (you will have 4 pieces of string at the knot end, trim close to the knot).

Running stitch around the edge of each cloth circle, about 1/2 from outer edge, gathering as you stitch

When your needle is back at the starting point pull the thread to make a small circle of gathers. Pull as tightly as possible being very careful NOT to pull too hard and break the thread.

Next - stuffing 

I pulled the stuffing in handfuls from the batting, filled the gathered circle, pushing the filling as needed to fill out the roundness I wanted. To finish the top I used the double threaded needle and stitched the open space closed.

The curly vines were made using doubled thin wire twisted around a pen, pulled off and shaped a bit.

The curly wires were pushed into the batting and then twisted to keep them in place.

I picked hydrangea leaves for  faux pumpkin leaves.

Stems defeated me, couldn't get them off the regular pumpkins. I am going to cut some short branches and glue them in a 'stems' place.

Making fabric pumpkins was evening work - and here is the before adding leaves group, (still have 3 round pieces of cloth in case I want to make more pumpkins).

I decided to NOT check with other posts on HOW to make them. I suspect there is lots I could have learned but I had fun playing with fabric (which rarely happens these years) and messing around with wire, batting, thread and a needle.

Remembering

October - Mom was born, back in 1920 and I remember her especially each year on her birthday month. She was born October 1st. She passed when she was 92.  Dad was born on August 4th, 1920 and he passed on October 5 at age 95. Gratitude for their lives.

Last week I had some fun playing around with a piece of fish shaped wood and chalk paint to make a pumpkin. Two posts in a row - having fun.

Thanks for visiting today. 

Hope you had some fun in your day too.

Hugs

Joy 

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