How To Make Sweater Pumpkins

A friend of mine talked about making sweater pumpkins and it intrigued me enough to turn my favorite sweater into sweater pumpkins. Even though that favorite sweater was threadbare and had holes, I was STILL wearing the thing because it was just so comfy.

It is super EASY to make Sweater Pumpkins out of an old sweater, jute, yarn, a yarn needle, Poly-Fil, and a glue gun.

How To Make Sweater Pumpkins

1. Cut a 10″ length (depending on the sweater) from the sleeve.
2. Turn the sleeve piece, inside out.
3. Use jute or yarn to tie off one end of the sleeve piece.
4. Turn the sleeve piece, right side out.
5. Fill the sleeve with Poly-Fil, making sure to keep the tied-off end, centered, at the bottom.
6. Tie the top off with jute (leave it attached to the jute roll – don’t cut it), leaving a 1″ – 2″ tail of the sleeve, at the top.
7. Tightly wrap the jute around the sleeve tail to create a stem and use a hot glue gun, to adhere it.
8. When your pumpkin stem is the right height, cut the excess sleeve tail off, to form a flat top.
9. Fill the flat top, of the stem, with hot glue and coil jute to fill the top.
10. Once the top is filled with jute, cut the jute.
11. Thread about an arm’s length of yarn or crochet thread on a yarn needle to create veins in the pumpkin.
12. Make a big knot at the end of your yarn or crochet thread.
13. Poke the needle through the top of your pumpkin, near the stem. It doesn’t matter much if you start at the top or the bottom.
14. Squish the pumpkin top and bottom together until the needle pokes through the bottom, at the center.
15. Pull your yarn tight and either tie off at the bottom or keep a firm hold on the yarn, so it doesn’t loosen up.
16. Poke the needle through the top of your pumpkin, in the next spot you’d like to have a pumpkin vein and poke through the bottom, pulling tight.
17. Repeat the previous step, until you have as many veins as you’d like. I did 5.
18. Holding your yarn firm, tie it off, at the bottom, to keep it snug and in place.

That seems like a LOT of steps but it is an EASY process, to create these fun Sweater Pumpkins.

So easy and fun, in fact, that I couldn’t let the body of my favorite sweater go to waste, and created a big pumpkin out of it!

THEN, I tried using an old pair of jeans to make a Jean Pumpkin! I like the way it turned out BUT it was pretty difficult to poke the yarn needle through denim. I might try it again with a smaller needle.

I have to say … I laughed at the first pumpkin I made … it seemed kind of weird BUT they’ve totally grown on me and I am now enjoying using them as fall decor!