In case I haven’t told you yet, I LOVE pumpkins! All colors, real ones, fake ones, paper ones, fabric ones… well, you get the picture!
I was thinking the other day that I would like to create a pumpkin craft, and decided to make a burlap pumpkin.
In planning the project, it dawned on me that it would be great if I could think of a stuffing that was readily available, perhaps recyclable, and cheap! Looking all over the house, I opened the pantry door, and what did I see? This…
Plastic grocery bags! Oh, my goodness. Eureka!! I haven’t switched to a fabric shopping bag yet, so we still get them… and while I try to recycle them, you can see my little bag holder is overflowing! It’s exactly what I was looking for.
So, the supplies you will need are:
- 1 yard burlap
- twine
- hot glue gun
- grocery bags… lots of them!
- stones or beans
- embellishments (ribbon, leaves, berries, etc.)
Square up your yard of burlap (it will probably be wider that 36″). Find the center of the piece of burlap using the HINT at the end of the post. Round the corners, creating a 36″ diameter circle. Cut 4 lengths of twine at 48″ each. Lay them out symmetrically on the back side of the burlap. From a scrap, cut out a small 2″ circle or square of burlap. Where the twine joins in the center, hot glue the small piece to secure all the lengths of twine. *Make sure you have something underneath the burlap because the glue will go right through to the surface beneath!! This will be the bottom of your pumpkin.
In order to provide weight and keep your pumpkin upright, you want to fill a zip-lock bag with rocks or pinto beans, or something like that. I just happened to have a bag of river rock on hand!
Assemble the stuffing: I chose to double bag, and use the natural color bags for the outside so if you get a glimpse of the bag through the burlap it won’t be white (I also turned the bag inside out, so the store logo wouldn’t be so dark). Place your bag of rocks, etc. in first and then just stuff it full of the plastic bags!! Keep stuffing until it’s stuffed pretty tight. Tie the bags at the top.
Flip your burlap circle so that the twine is on the underside. Place filled bag on top of your burlap circle. Pull up on all sides, gathering up all the ends until the burlap circle is completely cinched up. Then, from underneath, keeping the twine lined up the way you laid it out, bring each piece of twine up on opposite sides and tie off tightly, creating the ribs of the pumpkin. Take another length of twine and tie around tightly. I managed to do this by myself, but if you want it cinched really tight, you can have someone hold while you tie, or vice versa.
After tying off, you will have several long pieces of twine at the top. Scrunch the burlap up and wrap the twine around to make the stem! (Hot glue the twine as you wrap to make the stem).
Now, just add any embellishments that you might have on hand! I already had the ribbon and the berries stem. I purchased a pack of 10 leaves earlier at the dollar store… so that leaf cost a whole dime! All I had to buy for this project was 1 yard of burlap for 3.99/yd!! This project came in at under 5 bucks!
Tell me what you think… is she a beauty or what?
Do you like to work with burlap? What are some of your favorite fall projects?? I hope you’ll try your own burlap pumpkin!
Blessings!
** Here’s the HINT:**
HINT: To find the center of any piece of fabric, fold in half, then half again. The corner of all the folds is the center!
This post was featured here:
Linking up to:
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2017
