Pumpkin Hot Pad

Halloween is around the corner! Carved Pumpkins, Fall season Front Porch decors, Pumpkin Patches, Piles of Pumpkins at the stores are driving me crazy for pumpkins.. Finally I made this Pumpkin Hot pad for the Kitchen counter top. It may also dress up your Fall Season table. It gives a great decorative touch to the table. Recycle.. Recycle is the key and all the materials used to create are from Recycle Bin. I have used Weaving technique to create this hand woven pad.

Materials used:

Old T-Shirt(orange color)

Old shoe lace(black color)

Craft knife

Scissors

Thick Cardboard

Steps Overview:

Prepare Weaving Frame:

Use a thick cardboard as a weaving Frame. Draw the outline of pumpkin on the cardboard. Keep the drawing simple. Simple makes the job easy. Mark even number of lines as shown below. Cut out the Pumpkin frame from the cardboard. Make Slits along the lines drawn.

Weaving:

Cut the T-shirt or any Old fabric material into long strips. Knot together lots of the strips to make one very long strip.

Start weaving the Wrap(the main weave that goes up and down). Slip the fabric into the first top slit. Thread the fabric to the bottom slit, turn around the card board, bring it up to the second top slit and continue. Fill up the slits forming horizontal fabric lines in the front face and back face of the cardboard.

Now that weaving the warp is completed we have to weave the Weft. Start from the top edge of the cardboard, weave the cloth strips over and under the main wrap. Pull the strip all the way through the wrap before starting the next line. Leave a bit at the beginning and weave it back on itself to keep it from coming undone. When you reach the end turn the strip around and go back again. Weave under and over in the opposite way to the line above.

If the cloth strips length is small and ends, knot new fabric strip onto the end and keep weaving. While weaving keep it tight. Weave the last strip and secure the end by weaving it back on itself.

Turn the board over. Cut the fabric strips.

Gently pull the fabric strip through the slits and knot the pairs of strips together. Trim them to the same length.

Now that we have got the basic structure of Pumpkin, I played around with a black shoe lace to get the Pumpkin face. Mesh a shoe lace into the weave, forming eyes and nose shape.

I adore my pumpkin hot pad. Do you:-)