A Tale of Two (or more) Pumpkins

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Looking for an autumn craft, I came across the Instagram account of Timm Sevitz, a former member of the Crate+Barrel display team and a current craft whiz.  In one of his posts (https://www.instagram.com/p/CwslWW8rNsj/) he demonstrated little yarn jack o'lanterns. These were geared to children - half a toilet paper roll wrapped with a chunky yarn and then embellished with a twig stem and cut out paper eyes and toothy grins. From my winter attempt at crochet, I had a ball of thick varigated wool felting yarn on hand in appropriate atumnal tones, and I gave it a try.

Immediately I was hooked. Below, meet Pumpkin Number Two, which quickly led to more than a dozen pumpkins! I eliminated the pumpkin face for a bit of sophistication. And I also used four to five (about 60 inches or 150 cm) lengths of yarn together to speed up the wrapping. This was especially handy with a fine yarn, like the acrylic-alpaca-mix for the taupe pumpkin on the right. For little kids, a single length of a really chunky yarn would be easier.

What captivated me about making these pumpkins (and I hope will interest you, too) is how adapting to the materials available informs what you create. I had limited yarns and often only small quantities of any one yarn. I did try a pumpkin in a single colour - a fuzzy novelty yarn in white.

I preferred the look of ones done with a varigated yarn (like above) and, once I realized I could create my own varigated yarn, had so much fun. It was a great way to use up odds and sods of random leftovers. Thickness or ply didn't really matter - the focus was on the mix of colours.

A special yarn could be saved for just the outer layers - like this one below (and a darker version) found in a thrift store. The label says, "An unusual Irish import textured yarn in a multicolored blend." The under layers were a combination of creams and taupes that coordinated with the textured yarns.

Below, you can see winding the specialty yarn over the under layers.

Another yarn-saving tactic I used was to line the inner side of the toilet paper roll with a folded paper napkin. This bulked up the hole and creating a tight fit for the twig required less yarn. I also remembered making velvet pumpkin pin cushions one year as Christmas gifts. These I'd embellished with wire tendrils. And since I seldom let go of potential craft supplies, I had a box of wire on hand! To create the tendrils, I wound the wire around a pencil and then stretched the spiral a bit to make a more interesting shape.

About this time, I got the idea of making a smaller pumpkin and constructed a little tube from cardstock. (This also works great for the larger pumkins if, like me, you go a bit crazy and run out of toilet paper rolls!)

Now I was wondering how fabric strips might work!

I tore the strips to get a rustic, thready look, although the neat-freak in me was appalled! To get a rounded shape, I padded both the inner core and the outside of the paper roll with scraps of quilt batting. The inner padding made getting the strips through a bit of a pain, but a crochet hook helped.

My favourite of the cloth ones was the tiny one done with strips of an old grey t-shirt. I twisted the strips as I wound and the bumps, to me, really resemble the contours of a pumkin.

I don't think I'm quite done yet with making pumpkins - it's occured to me I could create a varigated look with strips of different fabrics. Or by using the multi-coloured selvages, which I often trim from yardage and save. But if you've followed me this far, I'm sure you're pumpkined out! I want to wrap up this blog, though, with appreciation and gratitude to all the artists and creators who share their work on social media. Their posts are a never-ending source of inspiration, comraderie and enjoyment! For more of Timm's whimsical crafts, check out his web site: https://timmsevitz.com/