Sweater Pumpkins/Gourds

Can you believe October is here? Whew, where has the year gone? I'm not really complaining because I love fall and Halloween so much that I'm excited to welcome October.
Several years ago, I worked as a teacher's assistant for Mrs. Brandt's functional skills classroom. I loved and hated that job every day. The teacher was extremely creative and we did lots of neat things with the students. One thing we did was to make pumpkins using fabric, "fluff", toilet paper, mulch, and hot glue. The pumpkins were so cute and I thought she was a genius, I have no idea if she came up with this idea on her own or found it somewhere. Well, as soon as fall weather hit I knew I needed to make some of those for our house. I thought some cheap sweaters from Goodwill would be perfect and would sort of update the craft. Then, wowza all these creative bloggers I follow and linked up with were posting sweater pumpkins. How cool is that to have an idea like someone else?!?! I hadn't even bought sweaters- those creative ladies are on it!

I finally bought some sweaters-all 1/2 price at Goodwill-in orange, yellow, and green and got to work. I started with a short sleeve, orange shirt that had whimsical stitching on it making a pumpkin from the front and a pumpkin from the back. I just used scissors to cut the shirt, seperating the front and back and discarding the sleeves. I placed a roll of toilet paper in the center of the panel then added fiber fill around the toilet paper. Using hot glue tuck the ends of the shirt into the center of the roll working all the way around. Instead of using mulch like Mrs. Brandt I cut short pieces off of branches. Then glue the stick in the middle. For a leaf I used the belt from a green jacket that I never wear. I ended up only doing the toilet paper roll process for those 2 pumpkins. When I started using the sweaters I started with the sleeves. Since it was a tubular (dude!) shape it was easier and they made cute lil pumpkins.

To make the sleeve pumpkins I cut each sleeve into 3 segments. Turn the segment inside out then hot glue into a +, then turn it right side out. Stuff. To glue the opening shut I added glue in 4 equally spaced spots and pinched closed but it still left an opening. Then glued these pinched flaps down all going in the same direction.This made it easier to add glue to the branch and insert it so that the glue pulled the glued spots inward. I know that's not completely clear but I couldn't figure out how to apply glue, pinch and hold the camera at the same time-I only have two hands. :)

The striped gourds are from a scarf that again I don't wear. I'm not a scarf person, sometimes I wish I was because I am jealous of how cute some ladies look in them-on me it's a huge FAIL! Anyway the scarf was knitted and tubular and had fall colors so I thought why not. They aren't my favorite gourds from the patch but I think they fit in with the others. 

Once I got started on making these lil cuties I couldn't stop. I still have an orange and green sweater that I haven't cut yet. Honestly, I'm thinking about saving the orange sweater to wear myself because it's an accent color for the kids' school colors (don't ask, lol)

Now that October is here that means it's time to get the Halloween decorations out too! Woohoo!!!

Thanks so much for stopping by At Home with Sweet T!

-Tracy

I will be linking up to these fabulous parties: