Fall Decorating...

In my previous post, I mentioned that a friend of mine makes these velvet pumpkins to sell when she travels, around the fall holiday.   If she had a store, I would have just bought a few more.  I mentioned it to my husband & he encouraged me to just make time to make some on my own.  

Here's how I went about making them. 

First you need the pumpkins stems.  Find a local pumpkin patch & start there.  Sometimes you might find a few stems laying on the ground.  The vendor let me have the stems since I was buying pumpkins anyway.  

Clean the stems & let them dry for a day or so.  

Afterwards, soak (forty five minutes to one hour) in some bleach & water to kill any mold.  Rinse & then slowly dry them out in the oven.  I set my oven temperature as low as it would go which is 170 degrees & let them sit there for a couple of hours.  

Nicely dried out from the oven.  Ready to be attached to velvet pumpkins.

Make your velvet pumpkins.  Think of making yo-yos & then filling the yo-yo.  I made the first few like in the photo below(no hem).  Didn't like the raw edges so, I then turned the fabric edge over (to form a hem) & I like that the edges come together much neater.

Add filler of your choice, depending on size of pumpkins.  Smaller pumpkins I used barley & larger pumpkins I used beans.

Add a little fiber fill so your beans, etc. do not spill out & whip stitch the opening shut.

I made several at at time so that I could glue the stems on in an assembly line process.

Glue your stems on to pumpkins.  I used a hot glue gun at first then I switched to E6000 (found at Hobby Lobby).  The hot glue gun dries quickly but, E6000 is stronger.  

Great for decorating your mantel.

Your dining table.

Buffet tables.

Side tables.

Coffee table, of course.

I'll probably make more but, I need to take a break & move on to something else.  I can think of other areas that would look great with these pumpkins.

Warning:  Once you make one, you won't be able to stop.  Making these velvet pumpkins is addictive.  They are so elegant.  

Where to buy them?

If you don't want to make these then, you may buy them.  Since, I began making these, I went online to find other resources & I stumbled upon the two companies that started the velvet pumpkins craze.  Visit www.hotskwash.com or www.plushpumpkin.com.  Once you go to their web sites, find store locators for the closest store in your state. 

If you have any questions about my process, simply leave a comment & I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Have a great day!