DIY Fabric Covered Pumpkins

As fall begins to roll around I’ve been doing a few crafts in preparation for Halloween decorating. I decided to take a stab at these DIY fabric-covered pumpkins using only leftovers already in my craft room stash. I love this idea because the fabrics are from other items in my home decor so the new pumpkins will perfectly match my decor and it will clear out some of those items I have been holding on to for way too long.

Materials

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• 3″ Upholstery Foam
• Spray Adhesive
• Electric Carving Knife
• Fabric of your choice
• Heavy Thread or Twine
• Upholstery Needle

Prepping The Foam

1. Start by cutting your foam into equal squares with my electric carving knife. You can use as many layers as you like but I chose two layers. My layers are 9″x9″

2. Once layers are cut you will bond them together using spray adhesive.

3. With layers fused I marked off some guidelines using a Sharpie, a salad plate worked perfectly as a circle template.

4. Use the carving to shape the foam into a round pumpkin shape

5. Carving dents around the sides will help create a more realistic shape.

6. Also use the knife to cut a hole through the center of the pumpkin.

7. Using a soft tape, measure the circumference of the pumpkin and the length from center top to center bottom. These dimensions will be the length and width of your fabric cut. Sew the fabric together along the width of the fabric to create a tube.

8. Insert foam pumpkin into the tube.

9. Use twine and an upholstery needle to create a draw string at the top and bottom of the tube. Draw tight and tie off at both ends.

10. Using a long length of twine and your upholstery needle run twine thru the center cut and around the outside of the pumpkin and back through the center. Draw tight into one of the dents you created when carving.

11. Continue going around the pumpkin in this manner until you have run your twine and tightened it over each dent. When complete knot and tie off twine.

12. Use a hot glue gun to glue on the stem. I happened to save pumpkin stems from my live pumpkins last year so I glued on actual pumpkin stems but you could use cuts from small tree branches if you don’t have a real stem handy.

Results

I chose to make several DIY fabric-covered pumpkins in different sizes and fabrics. Now I have a whole pumpkin patch that perfectly matches my decor.