Fall Crafties!

I have so many things pinned that I want to do, bake, and make, but thanks to some well-used naptime last week and Erica's tutorial, I found myself with some slightly cooler temps and some even cooler Fall decorations. Forgive my lack of as-you-go photos. She really covers all that, so jump on over to check out these NO SEW fabric pumpkins. I am all about simplicity for Fall decor and like a little orange, a few leaves, and lots of pumpkins (not jack-o-lanterns but pumpkins!).  Until Wyatt is old enough to give a flip, we won't do ghosts, spiders, and all the sparkly Halloween hoopla. I like items that I can take out October 1 (or ok, late September to coax out cooler Fall weather) and leave out until Christmas decorations come out right after Thanksgiving. Erica's pumpkins sounded like a great idea!


Materials Needed:

• Fat Quarters (18" x 21"), you will use one fat quarter per pumpkin -- I had to cut these as Hobby Lobby doesn't! 

• Iron

• Toilet paper roll (with the toilet paper still on it) -- And if I run out sometime in the next month, you better believe a pumpkin will go missing! 

• Newspaper

• Raffia (tan & green) -- I only found green and only used green. 

• Glue gun 

• Wood top for the pumpkin (sticks and cinnamon sticks would work too) -- I went with cinnamon sticks which was a bit of a disappointment. They didn't even smell! 

I do have some play-by-play changes.

I first of all could NOT get the newspaper to work out. So I just didn't use it. Perhaps mine look a little more like fabric wrapped around a toilet paper roll; I don't know.

But if you never knew that they were made of a toilet paper roll, you might not notice!

Erica also didn't have to use her glue gun. I ended up glueing two cinnamon sticks together to make a thicker stem and had to use it also to secure the sticks in place, as well as the raffia which wanted to slide up.

Here's my first (pre-raffia and minus all of his cute buddies):

And then I had to decide where to put them (all SEVEN of them!) Did I need to make 7? No, but I had that much fabric due to Hobby Lobby not cutting fat quarters. I should have looked up some other projects but instead made lots of pumpkins. They almost need different "levels" to put them all together and I didn't have any place to do that.

So we put some here:

And a few here (in the front room):

These are so easy to make, and honestly, just any sort of creative expression is just what I need these days.  The hardest part was gathering the materials and those Hobby Lobby/Michael's trips are brought to you by my amazing husband!
What do you think?