So yesterday, Monday September 23, 2019, was the first day of autumn. While I love autumn because of the cooler weather and changing of the leaves, I have not really been into fall crafts. But I had created the following DIY especially for this day and had planned to post it then. But as you know, life happens. I am in the middle of what is considered to be one of the most stressful periods in one’s life: I’m moving in 7 days and just started packing. Can anybody say stress!!
Anyway, so I was not able to post this yesterday as planned but here it is, just a day late. What I like about this activity is that it highlights pumpkins which are such fall ingredient and it uses yarn which to me is such a fall / winter item cos it always makes me think of knitting sweaters, gloves, hats, scarves etc to help keep you warm as the wether starts to cool.
I hope you check out this perfect fall tutorial.
Supplies: solid rectangular wood piece 10″ x 5″ (I got mine from a hardware / lumber store in Manhattan that gives scrap wood pieces away for free), small nails 1 inch long, pumpkin template (I found my template online and found one that I liked the look of), hammer, pliers, ruler, yarn, thread, pair of scissors, painters tape
First of, I used the same hack that people use when attempting to temporarily stick something to something else: grab a piece of painters tape, roll it on to itself to make a faux double sided tape. Stick it on to the back of the template ..
And then place it on to your wood piece. Now while I do like the finished product very much, I wish I had place the pumpkin asymmetrically. I think it would have been an interesting look.
Next, to make it easier for me, I decided to measure the distance between the nails framing the wooden piece at 1/2 wide and 1/4 inch from the edge.
Then I measured around the pumpkin template and placed the distance at 1/4 inches wide. My biggest learning here was that it would be nice to have equal number of nail points on the perimeter as around the pumpkin. I would make the weaving a little easier. I ended up having to weave around a few of the pumpkin nails twice in a row.
Now its hammer time.
As you can see here, I started adding nails around the perimeter of the wood piece but soon realized that I needed to start nailing the pumpkin first. Of note, because the nails were not that long, I found it easier and safer to hold the nail in place using pliers instead of my fingers.
But soon realized that I would need to do the pumpkin outline first. The problem as I saw it was that the perimeter nails would end up being in the way to hammer the pumpkin nails. So my recommendation is to do the inner pattern first before the perimeter.
Hammer time all done. Now ready for the weaving.
I started with a larks head knot. If you don’t know what that is, please use this link for a simple but easy tutorial on how to tie one.
I taped the yarn end pieces in the back to give me a cleaner working space. My weaving pattern was: going from the perimeter nail and wrapping the yarn around the closest pumpkin nail then bringing the yarn back to the nail adjacent to the nail with larks head knot. Repeat. As mentioned above because I did not have the same number of perimeter nails as pumpkin nails, it turned out that I needed to double wrap every fourth pumpkin nail.
Continue with the weaving going back and forth between the perimeter nails and the pumpkin nails.
All done with blue yarn weaving. I finished it with tying a double knot and securing it with a dab of glue and then cutting the ends off.
Now to outline the pumpkin, I started off creating a larks head knot at the first nail just below the pumpkin stem. Give yourself about 10 inches of extra yarn end.
Wrap the orange yarn around each pumpkin nail using a spiral pattern.
Once you are done with the spiral wrapping, tie a knot on the last nail. Then use the 10 inch long end yarn piece to create the ridges of a pumpkin. I brought the yarn down and wrapped it around the nail at the bottom of the pumpkin then used the spiral weave on four nails before creating another ridge by bringing the yarn from the bottom of the pumpkin to the top of the pumpkin then double knotted it and added a dab of glue to secure the knot. Then I repeated the process on the other side.
Almost done. The pumpkin has its ridges and the only thing left is to clean it up a bit.
All done!