A Needle Felted Pumpkin

As I mentioned in last week’s blog I love pumpkins: real pumpkins, fabric pumpkins, yarn pumpkins.  Lately I have been doing needle felted pumpkins.  They are easy, fun and make great hostess gifts if you are invited somewhere for Thanksgiving.

When I am doing a 3 dimensional item, I will use a ‘core’ batting to form the shape of the item and then add the colored roving or batting on the outside.  Core batting can be a cleaned undyed wool or even a polyester batting (just like you would use to stuff a pillow) .  You don’t want to us your colorful batting or roving on the inside of the figure where it can’t be seen. 

core batting

Once you have the core batting, start felting it into the shape you want.  If you use a polyester batting you may have to use more than the wool batting and may have to felt longer to get the shape you want.  That’s OK because in most cases the polyester batting is cheaper.

Core batting in its shape

When you have the size and shape you want for your pumpkin, start felting in the colored batting.  The batting I am using in the picture is called a sculptured batting so it has bumps and nobs of wool that wasn’t combed smooth.  I like the look of it for the pumpkin.  Not all pumpkins are smooth in its shell.  Keep adding the colored roving or batting until your core sculpture is covered.

roving on core batting shape

Covered core shape

    

Once you have your shaped covered with the colored batting, pick one side and over felt it.  That means keep needle felting the area until it is flat so you have a base to set it on. You don’t want your pumpkin rolling around.

Needle felt flat base

One the opposite side of that base, needle felt a small indentation.  This will be where your stem will go.

Create area for stem

 Now take some green batting; you don’t need much and started felting a stem . I usually try to make it a tiny cigar shape.  Use whatever colored green you would like as your stem.  I like the look of a dark green although an olive green would look just as nice.

Felting the stem

 Once you have the size and shape of your stem, needle felt it into the pumpkin.  Place the stem in the indentation and felt through the stem at the base and into the pumpkin.  Make sure you put your needle all the way through to the pumpkin or the stem won’t attach.  

Pumpkin with stem

     

Now most pumpkins have indentations along the outside.  To create those, start needling in a line from the stem to the base and keep needling until you see the indentation form.  Do the same thing all around the pumpkin. I usually felt so there are eight indentations.  But you do what you would like (including no indentations.)

Felting indentations

  Happy Pumpkin Season, everyone.

©2017  Cheryl Fillion