Are you ready for Day 4 of 7 Days of Thrift Shop Flips?!

I sure am, this is my very favorite project of the whole bunch and I'm so excited to share with you!!

If you are popping in here for the first time and you're wondering what's going on, let me catch you up real quick!

National Thrift Shop Day was August 17th and to celebrate each year, I post a thrift shop flip project every day for 7 consecutive days. We are now on Day 4! You can catch up on days 1 through 3 at the end of this post!

So back to today's project, we are making DIY embroidery hoop pumpkins!!! 😍

DIY Embroidery Hoop Pumpkins - 7 Days of Thrift Shop Flips

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Supplies You Will Need:

Embroidery hoops
White fabric (I used the fabric from a cheap pillow insert)
Paint (orange, black, white, pink, brown, and the color of your choice for the pumpkin eyes)
Silk leaves
Floral wire
Hot glue
Stuffing
Dried pumpkin stems (optional)

You should be able to easily find a couple of embroidery hoops at most any thrift store. I also used the fabric from a pillow form... also thrifted. I adapted this pattern from Hudson Holidays to fit.

I had one that I was using the stuffing out of and thought there must be something I could do with the fabric from it once the stuffing was all gone! It looked like this:

So, since I was starting with white fabric and I wanted to make a pumpkin... I needed to dye my fabric. You could totally just use orange fabric to start if you want to skip this part but I really liked the way this turned out.

To make your own dye, put water in a container large enough to hold your fabric pieces. Make sure its enough water to submerge the fabric into. Squirt in some orange paint and stir it up until its the color you want.

Cut a piece of fabric that is large enough to go in the embroidery hoop you have chosen. Submerge the fabric in the dye. It won't take long at all, just squish it around to make sure it all gets dye on it.

Lie it out flat to dry. I left mine overnight outside to dry.

Next, cut a piece of cardboard to fit the back of the embroidery hoop. This will be the backing for your pumpkin.

Glue the smaller, inside piece of the embroidery hoop to the cardboard. Allow that to dry.

glue the embroidery hoop to the cardboard bacing

Once that is dry, place a ball of stuffing on top of the cardboard.

Then lay the fabric piece over that.

Finally, place the top embroidery hoop piece over that and tighten the screw.

place the top embroidery hoop piece over the fabric

Now fold the fabric over the back, pull it tight, and glue it down to the back of the cardboard. Don't skip this step, this will secure it nicely in place and ensure that the cardboard isn't popped off the back with the pressure of the stuffing and tight fabric!! Hold it with clamps while the glue dries.

glue the fabric on the back of the cardboard

Now the boring part is done. You have a cute, squishy little pumpkin shape!

Let's start painting our pumpkins!!

Start with some stripes of orange. Mine is called Adobe Red but any darker orange will work. These are sloppy stripes, don't try to get the edges crisp, it won't be as cute in the end 😉

Now go over those with lighter orange. I used Harvest Orange. Again, very sloppy and don't cover the whole stripe this time. Lightly go around the outside edge of the pumpkin with the darker and then lighter orange too.

Next comes the face. Use black to paint the eyes, nose, and mouth. Leave the edges sloppy still... I mean you want a circle shape for eyes, but you don't want crisp lines. It should look like a bad smokey eye makeup job!! 😂

Use white to add to the eyes, and make little teeth! (Now you want crisp edges.)

Choose the color you want for eyes and paint a circle of that color. I mixed New Shamrock with white for the eye color and then straight New Shamrock for the iris stripes.

Use the end of the paintbrush to add the pupils. Add cheeks with pink and a dry stencil brush. Dip it in the paint, wipe it off on a paper towel, and then use circular motions on the pumpkin cheeks just like you put on your own blush!!

You can also use some black paint and make a little line along the sides of the stripes and add some eyebrows. Just dip your paintbrush in the paint and wipe it off on a paper towel so it is very dry.

Use the end of the paintbrush again and some white paint and make little highlight dots on the eyes. Two dots on the side of the pupil and one larger one in the iris. This gives him life and makes him not so flat looking!