DIY Sweater Pumpkins

While most bloggers – and department stores – have gone straight from Halloween into full-blown Christmas mode, I am not quite ready to make that cross over…just yet. After all, there are still a few weeks left until Thanksgiving, and I’m really trying to savor what’s left of this time of the year. Don’t get me wrong, I love celebrating the birth of my Savior and can’t wait to get started decking the halls, but let’s take this one season at a time people! 🙂

Back when I first posted my home’s cozy family room for fall in September, I promised you I would include a tutorial for how to make an easy DIY sweater pumpkin like the one that was featured in that post.

This is such an easy DIY project for anyone who wants some warm, fuzzy cuteness for their home’s fall decor. And when I say easy, I mean even a child can do it. Last week my kids had a day off school for a teacher’s convention, so we had some fun creating these adorable upcycled sweater pumpkins.

Here is what you will need to complete this project:

• an old sweater
• waxed dental floss
• sewing needle
• fabric scissors
• sharpie marker
• round plates
• cinnamon sticks or small branches from tree
• hot glue gun/sticks
• fiber fill stuffing
• burlap twine (optional)

You’ll want to start by finding an old sweater that you no longer wear or has been damaged in some way beyond repair. For me, I had a few really well-loved and worn sweaters that didn’t make it past last season, because there was a big hole in the material, or had gotten “eaten” by the washing machine and ended up ripping pretty badly. We choose 3 different colored sweaters for this project: one blue, one burgundy, and one oatmeal.

Then find a regular 10″ dinner plate, and maybe a smaller 6″ appetizer plate as well, if you want 2 different sizes for creating your pumpkins.

Lay out your sweater, once you’ve cut it apart into some nice workable sections, then use a sharpie marker to trace the outline of the plate, and cut it out using your fabric scissors. (I’ll admit, this part sort of killed me to do! These were some of my favorite sweaters and I had a hard time parting with them, even though they were damaged! May they rest in peace…)

Thread the dental floss through your needle and tie it off at the top & bottom of the string. You’ll be using a very basic basting stitch along the entire edge of the circle of fabric. If you’ve ever done a lace-n-trace project as a kid, you can do a basting stitch. Sew up through the fabric on one side, then down through the fabric on the other and so on and so forth, until you get all the way around the circle. Make sure your stitches are spread out and have some length to them to allow for a nice gathering effect.

Once your stitching is complete, you can pull the dental floss to the side and start to gather it together towards the center of the pumpkin’s top. But before you completely close it, you’ll first want to get your fiber fill and stuff it inside. You could also just cut up more scraps of the damaged sweater to fill it with as another option.

Once the pumpkin is stuffed, then pull tightly on your floss to gather it, enough so that you end up with a hole the size of a pencil’s eraser width at the top of the fabric.

Keeping the tension of the floss tightly pulled, you are going to tie off the floss into a knot to secure & hold the gathering effect. You can simply cut off the rest of the floss from the other end of the knot once you are finished.

You are then going to use some hot glue and secure your stem in place. We used cinnamon sticks for our stems because they smell so good, but you could also use just a plain old tree stick, as long as it was thin enough to fit inside the hole you have left on the top of your sweater pumpkin.

The end result are these cozy little sweater pumpkins! You can make them in all different shapes and sizes based on the amount of sweater fabric you have available, and the different plate sizes you use to trace. You could even do a really big one using a pizza stone as a tracing template.

And for added effect, you could even tie a cute bow on on the side using some burlap twine if you wanted to give it a little something extra.

I gotta say, I am really enjoying these sweet-cinnamon smelling, cuddly little pumpkins around my house right now! They add such a cozy touch to any home for fall and are so simple to create.

I hope you too will try them in the weeks to come! They would make an adorable centerpiece for your Thanksgiving table! 🙂