Perhaps because it wasn't something I did solely by myself.
Perhaps because I got the idea, and the fabric, so long ago, and then it sat there, year after year, waiting for the chance to become alive.
Anyway, here's what I did. I made pumpkins. I made four large felt pumpkins. I had bought the fabric when a local fabric store went out of business. It was one of those sales where, at first, everything is 10% off, then 20%, and so on. When it got to the fifty, sixty, and seventy percent reduction, I was lured in by the sale-fabric fumes, and purchased a number of items, most of which I have entirely forgotten about.
The five or six yards of bright orange and yellow felt that I had bought to make pumpkins lived in a laundry basket in the bottom of the closet in the craft/sewing room for lo-these-many-years, and I finally got it out, cut out wedges, sewed them together, and, wow, pumpkins.
Each pumpkin is made up of eight wedges, and each wedge needed to be about four times longer than it was wide. And each wedge needed to taper at each end to a point, with a forty-five degree angle at the top, (8 times 45 = 360), although I have to admit I didn't figure that out until I had all the pieces cut out, and sewed together, and it was a bit wonky on the top and bottom where the eight wedges met. But what pumpkin is perfectly formed anyway.
I managed to think it through, and leave one seam unsewn for most of it's length, just sewing at the very tippy top and very tippy bottom. Then I sewed on buttons, and made loops for button holes, so that the pumpkins could be stuffed with old plastic bags, old clothing, smaller sofa pillows, blankets, or whatever there is lying around the house. After Halloween, the pumpkins are then unstuffed, and stored until the next year perfectly flat, and not taking up nearly as much room as they would have stuffed.
I figured my four and six year old grandsons would be delighted to play with these pumpkins. That was, as I said before, a number of years ago, and it turns out that thirteen and fifteen year old grandsons are not nearly as excited by stuffing pumpkins with whatever they could find, adding faces with smaller pieces of felt, and organizing a display of these pumpkins.
Fortunately, (for me at least) seven year old grandsons are still interested in such items. One out of three isn't bad.
[Aside. This is one of the reasons it is so frustrating to not get around to doing things that I want to do. Children grow. I won't be able to make a dinosaur sweater for a five-year-old, or cute bunny slippers for a toddler, etc. On the other hand, there are always great-grandchildren. Better get started right NOW. The next ten or twenty years are apt to slip by as fast as the last ten, and I'll be late again.]
 |
| Pumpkins, one with sad face on left, and one with monster face on right. Sign says, "Now he's worried because his friend's in jail." In the picture below, sign had changed it to, "Now he's not worried because his friend's not in jail." |
No comments:
Post a Comment