Yarn Wrapped Pumpkin

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I was at Dollar Tree the other day with my daughter, she earned a trip to the dollar store as a reward for doing something really hard. While I was walking around waiting for her to choose something I was looking for things I could use as craft projects.

I had seen the foam pumpkins there before and almost bought a couple thinking I could paint them or something, but I wan't sure exactly what I would do with them so I didn't buy any. This time I decided to go ahead and pick some up and I would try to think of some way to transform them into something pretty.

They are not the loveliest things in the world, bright orange and green painted foam, some put together better than others, and you can see the texture of the foam. But I had a few ideas to try so I bought a couple. I ended up going back a couple of days later to buy more and will share all of the ways I found to transform these kind of ugly foam pumpkins over the next few days.

The first idea I had was to paint them, and that is at least part of what I did on all of the rest, but before I had a chance to sit down and paint I had another idea. I saw some chunky orange yarn in my yarn box, leftover from another pumpkin project actually. When I saw it I thought it may be cool to wrap the yarn around the pumpkin.

I pulled it out and started wrapping and gluing until the whole pumpkin was covered, and I really liked how it turned out. I felt like it definitely transformed the dollar store pumpkin into something a lot nicer.

And, it was a yarn pumpkin that was a lot quicker to make than any knitted or crocheted pumpkins. It didn't take a ton of yarn, a tiny amount of green and some orange. I used Hometown USA and started with a skein that had already had a little used from it, and I probably have enough left to do at least one more. It did take quite a few hot glue sticks though, but I thought the finished product was worth it.

How to Make a Yarn Wrapped Pumpkin

You will need:

• foam pumpkin
• Hometown USA in Portsmouth Pumpkin and Oklahoma City Green (or desired yarn, use a super chunky yarn to get a similar look)
• low temp glue gun and glue sticks (at least 5-6, maybe more depending on how much glue you use)
• scissors

Instructions:

Begin with the green yarn on the stem. Add a small amount of hot glue to the top of the stem and wrap some yarn around, carefully hiding the end of the yarn so it doesn't stick up.

Continue adding glue around and sticking the yarn to it until you have completely covered the stem. 

Repeat the process switching to the orange yarn and continue adding sections of glue and sticking the yarn down, working in a spiral. Keep the rounds close together so you can't see the orange underneath. 

Keep going until you have wrapped the entire pumpkin. Make sure that your end is glued down securely. 

If you have any little glue strings you want to get rid of at the end you can hit it with a blow dryer to melt them away.