Knitted Pumpkin & Pumpkin Purses

A trio of pumpkins....

I may have mentioned previously that I just love Halloween and pretty much all-year-round. So, the last few weeks have been great for acquiring spooky patterns and crafting goodies.

This little knitted pumpkin came from a PDF pattern from Catherine Ren's Etsy Shop. The pumpkin itself is knitted with a seam with 4mm needles. The orange wool is King Cole Superwash Merino Double Knit (not that I'm planning to wash it) and the stalk is Rowan Pure Wool DK. The stalk is also my first attempt at i-cord using evil double-pointed needles, so I'm quite proud. The pumpkin is a bit holey towards the top but quite cute with its flower button eyes.

This pumpkin purse was from a pattern in October's Simply Knitting magazine. It was knitted in two halves on 4mm needles, again with the King Cole Merino Superwash DK. It included make left and make right stitches, which were new to me, but which I think I got right. I actually sewed the two halves together after I had glued each half to the purse frame using Bostik All Purpose Glue. I've only used a purse frame once before and that was with fabric, which I found really difficult. The knitted purse, being stretchy, was quite a bit easier to poke into the channel of the purse frame. I got a bit of excess glue on the frame, but that was easily picked off when dry. The pumpkin face is made from scraps of black felt and simply glued on with fabric glue.

My final pumpkin product is this little felt purse made entirely from spooky items in my stash. The pouch was made from 10" x 6" of wool mix felt with an orange cotton spotty lining and a piece of sew-in interfacing in-between. I started by sewing the ribbon onto the front of the felt. I then sewed the layers of fabric right sides together on the sewing machine, leaving a gap for turning. After turning, I top stitched the whole thing and sewed the pouch down. To finish, I hand sewed a press stud to fasten the purse and concealed it with a cute pumpkin button. The left hand seam is in fact really shocking but you can't see it on this photo :)


So there you have my pumpkin tribute. Happy Halloween!

Melx