How to Make Sock Pumpkins from Old Socks

Okay, so let's get started on making our DIY sock pumpkins. And again, here's a little picture of the little pumpkin we'll be making. They're super cute and adorable. You can see the little features that make it just a really cute little pumpkin. And it was just made out of a pair of socks. So to get started, I have my sock. And again, you can follow along in the pumpkin guide. You can print that off if you prefer written instructions. Those are down below. I just had it found at a Kinko's or something. That's totally not necessary. But it's a nice touch if you think you'll be making more of these. You can keep it handy if you prefer written instructions. But let's get started. So to start, take your sock. And I've already made one pumpkin out of this boot sock here. So I'm going to make a second one with the bottom. And I'm going to cut a section that's about seven to eight inches. And when you're making sock pumpkins, the nice thing about once you get to the toe of your pumpkin is you can actually just sew one side of this and make a really cute pumpkin. So I will show you that towards the end if you want to stick around. But to get started, I'm just going to show you how to make a sock pumpkin out of the middle section of the sock. Because this way you will for sure know how to make it with the toe still in place. But you can do it also with just the tube portion of the middle part of the sock. So that's what I'm going to do so I can show you how to sew up both ends. So the first step is just to turn your sock inside out. And I really like the stripes on this sock. So I'm curious how that's going to turn out. So I'm starting inside out. You're going to need to begin an embroidery needle or a doll needle. I got this one at the dollar store for 50 cents because there are two for a dollar. And then just start by tying off your embroidery floss on the one end so that it will stick into your sock when you start sewing in and out of the sock. So just go in and out of the top portion or one of the sides of the sock until you close up the entire side. So you're just going in and out with your needle every quarter inch about. And once you've done that, then you can pull your sock tight and then take the embroidery needle and thread and just go through the center a couple more times. And that will just give you a really sturdy cinch on your side of your pumpkin. So once you've done it a couple of times, just tie off your thread. And this is actually a really great sewing project if you're not a sewist or you're a seamstress or you don't sew. This is a good way to get your hands kind of dirty with sewing in and out of fabric. It kind of gives you maybe just some confidence for trying the real thing if you are a little bit intimidated by sewing. So just tie the knot a couple of times. And then when it's nice and tight, I usually do about three knots. I like to make sure that it's going to stay really nice and tight on there. So once I have it tight, then I just cut off the extra thread. And then you're just going to turn your sock right sides out so that it's the correct way. So then you kind of have a little thing that looks similar actually to the bottom of the sock. So if you're using the bottom portion of the sock, this is where you would start the tutorial for the pumpkin. You wouldn't have to obviously sew one of the sides because the bottom of the sock is filling it in already. So once you have the sock looking like this, then we're going to go ahead and put rice into the sock to give us a nice weight in the bottom of our pumpkin. And I spilled a little bit of rice, but it's okay. I usually use about a quarter cup to a half cup of the rice. And this little portion of the sock is a little smaller than what I usually use. So I'm actually going to use a little less rice, stick more like a quarter cup of rice in there. And then once you have your rice in the bottom of your pumpkin, you're going to go ahead and fill the rest of the sock with the polyfill. So there's some thread in here. I'm just going to stuff my pumpkin and I do like a little plumper pumpkin. So I like to put a good amount of polyfill so that the sock looks pretty plump when I'm done with it, because that will give you the really nice sections of your pumpkin. And once you make one or two of these, you'll get a better feel for how fat you like your pumpkins. But I'm pretty satisfied with this. So I'm going to now close up the top of my pumpkin. So you just do the same thing. You take your embroidery thread and just thread it into your needle. And then just do the same thing you did with the bottom of the sock by just going in and out. But this time you're actually going to go around the edge of the sock. So let me show you how I do that. I'm just going to tie off the knot on the bottom of the thread and then take your thread, needle and thread, actually start on the inside of the sock because the knot will hide your knot. And then just go around the edge of the sock and then you're going to cinch it like you did the bottom. So I hope that was clear. And this is actually another technique you can use for making velvet pumpkins. And I have a video for that as well. But just go in and out around the edge of the top edge of your sock. OK, so now I'm overlapping. So then once I've gone all the way around, I pull it tight so then it cinches the pumpkin. And at this point, I like to take my needle and thread and go through the center again a couple of times, just getting it really nice and tight. So once and then I'll go again on this side. And the thread just kind of wraps a little bit more around the sock and gives me a little bit more of a cinch. And I like it to be really well done. So I do it numerous times. But if you run out of thread and you can just do it a couple of times, that's still OK. So then once you've closed out the top of your pumpkin without cutting the embroidery floss, just trim off all the extra fabric of your sock that you have so that you have just a little bit of the fabric showing and that just the portion that has the thread in it, really. And then if you have a lot of thread left, which I really don't with this one, but you could actually just move into making your sections right now. But I'm just going to tie this off and I'm going to use a larger piece of embroidery thread to do my sections just so I can show you what happens if you run out of the thread and you've just done the top and not the sections yet, then just tie it off if you're not. And again, I like to do three knots. And if you are more of a visual person, you like written instructions, the guide does go through all of these steps, step by step. And so if you need to slow down and take a little bit longer on a step, then this guide is super helpful for you. So just another little plug for that. Then cut off your thread when you have your needle. I mean, you're not in place. And then we're going to use one more section of thread, embroidery thread to make the sections of the pumpkin. So let me just get it set up on my needle here and then we will get started on the last portion, which is making the sections of the pumpkin. And if you have any questions or comments, feel free to just comment below. I like helping you to get the look you're looking for with your pumpkin. And you do want a good portion of thread for the sections, at least 20 to 30 inches, probably closer to 30 inches and a little bit more possibly, depending on how big you're making your pumpkin. And these sock pumpkins, they end up being about four to six inches when they're finished. And I think that's pretty standard for socks because there's not, you're not making a huge or taking a huge amount of fabric, but you could make them larger by maybe adding a little more polyfill at times. But they end up being about four to six inches like the one here. Okay, so now that my needle and thread are ready, I like to start at the bottom of my pumpkin and I just go right through the center, if you can see me doing that, and go right up through the top. That way my knot is stuck in the bottom. You don't see it when you're looking at the pumpkin. And then now you're just going to make six sections with the thread. So what I'm doing is I just pull it tight and then I just wrap it around the pumpkin and I go back through the bottom of the pumpkin, just where I came out before, and then go through the top again. And you just repeat that for six different sections of your pumpkin. And this is really the same technique that you can use to make any kind of fabric pumpkin. So if you do sweater pumpkins, you know, your tube could be the sleeve of the sweater. Or if you're doing any other kind of fabric, you can just sew a tube of fabric to get you started. So you can really do it with anything but just keep on making those sections now. And I found that six is just the right number. So I'm trying to keep all my pumpkins at around six inches or six sections. That's my second one. So when I get on to my third section, I always like to look because it should be about midline of my pumpkin. And that's how this one is. That's good. Go back through the bottom and up through the top and just keep on doing that. And I'm getting short on thread here. I always like to try to make it with one piece of thread, but that might not be the case today. And that's OK because then I can show you what I do then. So I'm running out of threads. I'm going to take a break here. I have one more section to make. I could try to kind of keep on going and get it, you know, down to the bottom, which could be possible. But what I'm going to do is just tie it off and I'll show you what happens if you run out of thread. So just tie off your knot again and then just use another piece of embroidery thread. It's not really necessarily complicated, but just some people like to see it. So I will give you a full, full view of how you do it. So then take another piece of thread, just get it on your needle and then fill in that last section. And then after I finish the sections, I will quickly show you how to embellish the pumpkin if you're interested in having some tips for that. I really prefer when I'm doing the stem of my pumpkin to use a natural pumpkin stem. So one that's actually taken off of a pumpkin. You can get those on Etsy or online, but you can also just dry out your own pumpkin stems, which is what I do. And I will show you that in a minute, but I will finish with the last section here of the pumpkin and then we'll move on to embellishing it with the stems, felt and little curly cues of the pumpkin. So when I get to the last section of the pumpkin, I like to pull the needle through the center of the pumpkin on top and just tie it off there. So you can see I have one, two, three, four, five, six sections. It looks cute how I want it. So you can give it a final yank on the end of the thread and then just tie it off. And these pumpkins are pretty sturdy. Like I don't even feel necessarily the need to tie this super tight because I know that that thread is really well in place. But I'm going to tie a good either way, just do the two to three knots and then cut off the remainder of the thread. So great. So now we have our little base of our sock pumpkin. We have six different sections and it's starting to look really cute like a pumpkin. So that's always fun. So how I embellish the pumpkin is I usually use the natural pumpkin stem, as I mentioned, and then I like to put curly cues on the pumpkin. So I have these really cute little rusty baby crib springs left over from a project my husband's aunt was doing. And then here's another option. If you like the curly cue look, you can use paper covered wire and just wrap it around a pencil or a paintbrush and you can kind of just twist it around there and then you're going to get these nice curly cues on here. So those also work really cute on the top of the pumpkin. This particular wire I have is a little thicker, but it's still really cute. So that works or twine can also work, but I'm going to use these little rusty springs for today. So I just bend that. If you have these, they're really cute on pumpkins. And then I like to cut a little leaf out of felt and there's a pattern in the pumpkin guide, but really all you do is just cut a three lobbed, I don't know if that's what you say for a leaf, but three lobbed leaf and that will just sit on the top of my pumpkin and kind of cover up some of the fabric that's still showing from the top portion of the sock. So the felt fills it in nicely. So you really won't see that once we're done. So I take my hot glue gun and just glue that in place. And then I take the bottom of the stem and hot glue that as well, trying to hide as much of the hot glue as possible. I don't really like it when the hot glue shows. It is a lot cuter when you can't see any glue sticking out. But so just trying to be careful with that and always be careful when hot gluing, it's easy to burn yourself. So they do have those silicone gloves, as I often mentioned, and I just hold the stem in place for a good 20, 30 seconds or as long as it takes to make sure it's going to stay in place. Great. So then that is all for the stem. And then I just add a little curlicue. So I just take the hot glue gun. I glue a couple of the different spirals and then I stick it in place on the pumpkin. And that's really all there is to making a sock pumpkin. From these boot socks that I'm using today, I can probably make six pumpkins. And I think I bought the socks for 99 cents. So six pumpkins for 99 cents. You really can't beat that. And these are cute little gifts for fall and Thanksgiving as hostess gifts or just family and friends. They're so cute and they're a fun way to reuse old socks or sweaters or whatever you have lying around the house. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. 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