Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Happy Halloween and a cross stitch pumpkin!

Gosh I'm terrible at keeping up with this blog... lots of new patterns in the shop!  But as it's almost Halloween I thought I'd post a little project I did that isn't in the etsy shop... my cross stitch pumpkin!

cross stitch pumpkin heart satsuma street crossstitch cross-stitch xstitch halloween jackolantern

That's right, I'm crazy and I embroidered a pumpkin.  It was easy, and there was wine and power tools involved.  So, not a project for kiddos, unless you leave out the wine.  But who would leave out the wine?!?

Anyway here's what I did:  first I scooped out my pumpkin as you usually do, except I did it from a hole in the back of the pumpkin instead of cutting out the top.  Then I drew a simple heart template on paper, taped that to the pumpkin and then marked where my holes would go with a push-pin.  I drilled the holes with a power drill with a 1/8" bit, but I wish I'd drilled bigger holes...they got really tight as I started stitching.

Then it was just a matter of cross-stitching my heart with that big bulky weight yarn you see in the photo and a very large tapestry needle.  I found it was also helpful to have a toothpick to shove in the holes from the front of the pumpkin when I was searching around for the right spot on the slimy dark inside.  Your hands, the needle, and the yarn will all get really slimy and it gets harder and harder to pull the needle through the holes, the more yarn that is passing through them, so I found I also needed a pair of pliers to help pull the needle through sometimes.

And voila!  Now I can say I have embroidered fruit.  That's right, pumpkins are a fruit!  Look how much you've learned today!