Here’s a fun craft project that you can get the kiddos involved with. We made some pumpkins for teacher gifts and they can also be used as place cards for Thanksgiving dinner. Your guest can take them home as a fun reminder of the dinner.
Here’s what you will need:
- Material (we used all sorts of different types, leopard print, green silk, burgundy velvet, but our favorite was this orange fleece from Hobby Lobby)
- Rice
- Thread, we used a really strong, heavy-duty, thread
- Glue gun
- Pumpkin stems (pull them off your pumpkins in the front yard). Make sure to give the part that attaches directly to the pumpkin time to dry out (you don’t want mold growing on your project).
We used a dinner size plate and traced around it to create our circle:
Cut out your circle, then stitch around (approximately 1/2 inch in) to create your “drawstring”
Once you’ve sewn all of the way around the circle, do not cut your thread… you still need to sew the pumpkin closed at the end.
Fill with rice. Keep working the rice into the pumpkin (we used almost three full cups, using the blue cup in the picture above)…we like our pumpkins REALLY full, you may like yours not so full.
Once you’re happy with how full your pumpkin is, start sewing the top closed.
Keep sewing and pulling the excess fabric on top together and it will eventually come together nicely.
Now it’s time to glue on the stem… and ta-da… you have the cutest little pumpkin ever:
Here are some of the others we made:
We used a large round platter, a dinner plate, and a soup bowl for these three sizes. These three were the first ones we made and we didn’t “stuff” as much rice in them so they’re not as round and firm as the orange one above:
If you’re using the pumpkins for place cards, we suggest cutting a leaf out of construction paper and tying it to the stem with the name of your guest on it.
We would love to see pictures and hear about your pumpkin project!
