Blogger Stylin Home Tours is this week [our tour's coming up on Thursday] and I wanted to give you guys a sneak peek at some of the decor. I love fall decorating, but the items and materials I typically style with, just aren't kid friendly. And with twin, 10 month olds, the thought of banning them from certain rooms just wasn't fair...why should the grownups have all the fun? In wanting to put some pumpkins in our living room, I debated the options...fake plastic pumpkins, the kids would try to eat...and the real deals are heavy, and right now we're in the phase of pulling everything down. So, DIY fabric pumpkins seemed like a great idea. I wanted them colorful, plush and BIG!
For a non-sewer, I have to say, I was quite proud of how these turned out. I found the first how-to here, but the instructions were quite limiting and confusing for a novice sewer. I looked throughout the web, found some tutorials and modified a few to fit my needs. If you're looking for better step by step instructions check out this post. I didn't do mine quite like hers, but I did reference it for better explanation of the Martha Stewart post.
So, once I had the general how to, I decided on cotton fabric for the body and corduroy for the stems. To make the shorter, fat pumpkin, I cut the cotton fabric in a rectangle with one side twice as long as the other. For the taller pumpkin, I cut the rectangle with one side 1 1/2 times longer than the other. Also, because I wanted these to be super durable I double and triple sewed things. Probably way more than needed, but for my first kid craft I wanted to be sure they wouldn't fall apart in one go. [And after one week of plenty of ruff and tumble from P & K, I'm glad to say they're super sturdy]. The only other tip I highly recommend is to overstuff these guys Like sit on the pumpkin, shove more filling and then sew it up. I didn't do that with the navy dot one and I have to say, it doesn't look as finished as the yellow pumpkin.
Anyways, just wanted to share a DIY to try. These looked super intimidating at first, but were surprisingly easier than I expected. Now go and create something fun for fall!
