Decoupage Pumpkin

Easily turn any plain pumpkin into a work of art! This DIY fabric covered decoupage pumpkin is an easy fall craft that brings an elegant flair to your autumn decorating.

Happy fall y’all! This fun and easy fall craft is one that you will definitely want to try! I have made other decoupaged crafts before but this is the first time I have made a decoupage pumpkin. I am really happy with how it turned out and couldn’t stop with just one! 😉

If you are unfamiliar with decoupage, it is basically a decorative technique that involves cutting out shapes from a source such as paper, napkins or fabric, and then gluing that onto whatever surface you want to decorate. It is so simple to do and gives stunning results.

For example, check out these decoupage eggs I made for Easter one year. Aren’t they gorgeous!? For those eggs, I used napkins, but I decided to use fabric for my decoupaged pumpkins this time. I decorated with a blue theme for fall this year. It looks really lovely and I will be sharing that with you soon! I found this beautiful blue and white fabric at Hobby Lobby and decided to cover some pumpkins with it to go with my theme.

To be quite honest, the paper napkins are a lot more forgiving to work with than fabric strips when decoupaging, but I think these fabric covered pumpkins still turned out amazing! The fabric has a toile or chinoiserie style to it which I also loved! To me, those styles both look really similar even though one is French and the other Asian inspired. 🙂 Either way, they are lovely and look very elegant.

The great thing about making your own seasonal decorations is that you can customize them however you want. If this Chinoiserie pumpkin is not your style, then you can pick whatever fabric you want! Make a plaid pumpkin, or polka dot one! The options are endless!

WATCH THE QUICK VIDEO

Don’t want to read all the instructions? I have included a video in this post showing you how to make a decoupage pumpkin. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. Also, if you ever want to slow down the video, just click on the three dots in the lower right hand corner of the video and you can change the playback speed. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading.

Supplies to make a decoupage pumpkin

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

Plastic pumpkins – my pumpkins are about 4.5 inches in diameter
Fabric of choice – you don’t need much, a fat quarter would work fine.
Cutting mat, rotary cutter and 24″ ruler – this is optional, you can just use scissors to cut your fabric but this makes cutting fabric so much easier!
Mod Podge
Foam brush

Cut your fabric strips

The first step to make a fabric covered decoupage pumpkin is to figure out how big of fabric strips you need to cut. I found my plastic pumpkins at Hobby Lobby but you may have some around already that you want to use. In other words, they may not be the same size. Whatever pumpkin you choose, make sure it is a lighter color so the color doesn’t show through the fabric.

When working with a darker colored fabric, it may not be a big deal for this or even if the fabric strips overlap. However, with a lighter colored fabric like this one, you can see where the strips overlap. I had to play with the sizes on the strips to get them to fit correctly. I would suggest that you take a cloth measuring tape and measure the ribs on your pumpkins. Add 1/4″ to that measurement for your strips. Take notice that all the ribs of the pumpkin may not be the same size though. I cut some of my strips to 1.5″ and some to 1.75″.

Next measure from the stem to the bottom of your pumpkin, then cut your strips into sections of that length. I cut my strips down to 6″ sections

We don’t want a lot of excess bulk of fabric at the top and bottom of the pumpkin so you will want to cut off the corners of your fabric strips. I lined up the ruler in the center of the strip and cut two inches of each corner.

Repeat this step with all four corners.

How to make a decoupage pumpkin

Remove the stem from the pumpkin so you don’t have to work around it. They just easily pull out. Set it aside for later.

Take a paper plate or napkin and lay a fabric strip upside down on it. Using a foam brush, paint on some Mod Podge to the back side of the fabric.

Lay the strip onto one of the ribs of the pumpkin.

Smooth down the edges of the fabric forming it around the rib of the pumpkin using your fingers. If you have some extra fabric that you have to fold over, try to do it at the bottom so it is not seen like in the picture below.

Repeat this step for the whole pumpkin, trying not to overlap the strips too much but not leaving gaps. If you have to fill in a gap, you can always cut a small piece of fabric to glue in the gap.

Don’t worry if the pattern of the fabric doesn’t line up perfectly, you will not notice it in the overall pattern of the pumpkin unless you are looking closely at it.

You may want to paint over some of the edges of the fabric strips with Mod Podge if they feel like they are not sticking down well. I did not need to do this much however. Once you have filled the whole pumpkin, set aside to dry. It dries very quickly. Here is a view of the top and bottom of the pumpkin too. You can see that the bottom has the most folded areas but you will not see that anyway. 😉

Once the pumpkin is dry, reattach the stem.

Here are some other DIY pumpkin crafts you may enjoy

Enjoy your Chinoiserie pumpkin

So simple… right? I would love to see all the different pumpkins you all decorate using this method. With Halloween around the corner, it would be fun to make some Halloween ones too!