How to Make Fabric Pumpkins

Grab your fabric stash and join me for a fun tutorial on how to make fabric pumpkins. You can use all kinds of different fabrics, the options are endless. Add a real dried pumpkin stem to top it off!

I went a little crazy decorating with pumpkins this year for my fall decor. 🙂 I painted some real and faux ones, made a finger knitted yarn pumpkin and some fabric pumpkins. You can see them all in my pumpkins galore fall mantel post. I will be showing you how I made them in a 3 part pumpkin tutorial series. This is the first part to show you how to make fabric pumpkins.

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For this project you will need:

Fabric
Poly-Fil stuffing
Needle and thread
Hot glue gun and glue sticks
Scissors
Dried pumpkin stems

I have always loved the look of the velvet pumpkins and wanted to try to make some. However if you have priced velvet material, you know it can get a little expensive. I figured that I might be able to find some at the thrift store. While I did not find any velvet, I did find some other textured velvet-like fabric remnants and this cute green gingham fabric.

Where to find dried pumpkin stems

The dried pumpkin stems came from my real pumpkins last year in anticipation of making those velvet pumpkins this year. 😉 They are easy to cut off of pumpkins. Just let them set out for a couple of days to dry them out. I saved various sizes so I would have options for making my fabric pumpkins. If you did not plan ahead, you can always order some dried pumpkin stems from Etsy.

These fabric pumpkins are so easy to make and the great thing is that you can use virtually any fabric to change up the colors and textures. They make it super easy to coordinate pumpkins into your decor, especially if you don’t want the traditional fall colors.

How to make a fabric pumpkins

My velvet-like fabric remnants were already in a square shape, so I easily cut them into a circle by folding them in half, then half again and rounding off one the corners. Of course it is not a perfect circle but for this project you do not need to be perfect! Another simple way to cut out a circle is to use something you have around the house for a template. For instance, with the green gingham fabric, I used a salad plates and chargers as templates.

Add a running stitch around the circle

Take your needle and thread and make a running stitch along the edge of the circle. Don’t worry, you do not need any sewing experience to do this! It is simply done by tying a knot at the end of the thread, then passing the needle in and out of the fabric. I just used regular thread but if you are worried about the thread breaking, you can always use embroidery thread.

As you are working your way along, scrunch the fabric up along the thread like shown below.

Add some stuffing to form the pumpkin

Keep pulling the fabric along the thread until it is all scrunched up into a pouch shape. Fill the opening with some Poly-Fil stuffing. I stuffed it as full as I could while making sure the opening was still able to close all the way. Once you have it full, pull the thread until the opening closes. It helps to move the fabric along the thread when closing the opening. Sew the opening shut by running the thread back and forth various directions and tying a knot at the end.

Glue on your dried stem onto your fabric pumpkin

Take one of your stems that is the right size for your pumpkin and figure out where to place it on your pumpkin. Make sure the opening is completely covered. Add some hot glue to the bottom of the pumpkin stem and press it down firmly on the fabric pumpkin for a few seconds.

Now you know how to make fabric pumpkins! Make lots more!

That’s it! Now you have a cute fabric pumpkin! You can adjust the stuffing to make it look more pumpkin shape if desired. If you are like me, now you will go a little crazy making fabric pumpkins. 😉

These can be used with real and faux pumpkins and they look adorable. Here is a picture of one of the green gingham pumpkins on my fall mantel with some other pumpkins.