Felt Pumpkin Face

When I was little, I loved to design pumpkin faces! I had a teacher one year that had sheets of paper with “blank” pumpkins on it. We could make our own Jack-O-Lanterns in our spare time. I remember busting through my school work so I could get to designing some pumpkins!

It must be in our genes–my daughter is equally crafty.

I came up with a solution, that will save me from going through a ream of paper this holiday!

A felt pumpkin.

Here is what you will need to create your own felt pumpkin face:

• 9×12 Sheets of Felt (orange-2 sheets, green-scrap, black-1 sheet)
• Scissors
• Sewing Machine with white thread (optional) or
• Fabric Adhesive
• Chalk

This literally took me about 20 minutes to complete. And my daughter has been playing with it all evening long. Win/win!

Are you ready to make your own?

Fold one sheet of your orange felt in half vertically.

Using your chalk, draw a rough outline of your pumpkin. Try to utilize as much of the felt as you can- to make a larger pumpkin surface.

Then, cut out your outline. You will be leaving the felt folded, so you will be cutting two pumpkin shapes out at the same time, that will line up perfectly. You can use a damp cloth to clean up any lines after you cut the pumpkins out.

Lay your pumpkin shape over the top of the second piece of felt. Trace the outline of the bottom of the pumpkin- about 1/2 to 3/4 of the body of the pumpkin. This will be the back “pocket” to hold all the pumpkin face piece.

Cut out the pocket, and set it aside for later.

With the green felt scrap, cut two stems.

Sandwich the stems between the two pumpkin shapes, and pin it in place.

If you do not want to sew, you can use fabric glue in place of the stitching for the next few steps. (I am the worst seamstress ever, but this felt was very forgiving, and this was a super easy project!).

Sew the stem, and the pumpkin right down the middle. Remove the pin in the stem.

Continue to sew the pumpkin, vertically, following a slight curve- to mimic the lines a pumpkin would have.

Add some additional stitching to the stem.

Take the pumpkin “pocket” that you set aside, and lay it over the back of the pumpkin, line it up, and pin it into place.

Then with your sewing machine, stitch the entire perimeter of the pumpkin.

Remove the pins, and trim the edges of the pumpkin if necessary.

Using the chalk, sketch some pumpkin face pieces on the black felt . You can really get creative here! You can do a Google search to give you ideas of face pieces you can use. Don’t forget eyebrows, and mustaches!

Cut out your face pieces, and using a damp cloth, remove the residual chalk lines. Store the face pieces in the convenient back pocket.

Hand your “re-carvable” pumpkin over to the kids, and let them go to town creating their own Jack-O-Lanterns.

Happy creating!

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