Needle Felted Pumpkin
Start your pumpkin by tightly felting some core wool into whatever type of pumpkin shape you prefer.
Next, take at least three shade of pumpkin orange and mix them together. You can do this with your hands or, as in this case, inexpensive dog grooming brushes.
Take the wool that you have blended together and gently curve over the pumpkin. Felt this down.
After you have the top coat of the pumpkin to your liking, felt down the ridges of the pumpkin. You want to have slight indentations at equal intervals all around the circumference.
I added a wee bit of off white to set off and also soften the oranges. Keep working on the color and getting the striations just as you like them.
To make a leaf you can felt a circle and cut the leaf out of that (and tuck in and felt down the edges) or you can simply felt this shape as you go.
The stem is a pipe cleaner tightly wrapped with the leaf color, felted tightly and then felted to the pumpkin base.
As a side note, I did an experiment with wet felting. The taller pumpkin was subject to hot soapy water and a lot of squeezing. Wet felting is not normally done with 3D pieces but I wanted to see if the top coat would look any smoother than the needle felted piece that was felted alone. There was very little difference in the two pumpkins when they were done. The wet felted piece looked slightly duller on top but it also melded the colors together well.
