My Felted Pumpkin

This is my felted pumpkin.  I took a hunk of loose wool batting and then three shades of orange and a couple of shades of brown roving’s.  First, I started rolling the batting into itself to form a ball. With another hunk I wrapped in the other direction.   Next, with all the oranges and a little brown roving I pulled them into an inch or so wide strips.  Finding what I considered to be the centers of my ball, top and bottom and using a felting needle I punched the end of the strip into the bottom center and then wrapped it completely around the ball to the top, repeating the needle felting and back to the bottom.  I blended the colors as I moved around the now magical pumpkin.  Once all the all the ends were fixed I began to needle felt the entire pumpkin smoothing as I went. At one point I thought of wet felting and decided “NOT” As I worked, more ideas took shape on how to form and make this an awesome pumpkin.   I used a heavier needle and began felting in the edges to make it look realistic.  Constantly shaping the pumpkin with my hands as I went along and here is a perfect pumpkin. 

Now it was onto the stem and leaves.  I took brown, burnt orange, orange and grey-brown and layered strips of colors together and then wet felt the stem.   For the stem I used soap and warm water and rolled the roving between my palms.  At one point I doubled it because it got to thin.  I raised it in cold water and rolled it in a towel.  Not waiting for it to dry I needled it into the top of the pumpkin and shaped it.  The leaves are needle felted with crisscrossed roving in several of the above colors.  Once I needle felted them enough to make a good piece of fabric I cut out the leaves and needled the ends of the leaves into the top of this cute pumpkin.  That’s all folks! LOL