When art teacher Revonda Baker retired a few years ago, she didn’t stay home and do crafts. She moved right into her husband’s former pharmacy store in Hartville, Missouri, and opened Bittersweet Country Marketplace, a place that not only teaches crafts to the community, but also, offers vendors opportunities to sell their wares. She hosts monthly “First Friday” events, where women can drop in and make a craft item for free. In October, she chose to make wooden hoop pumpkins, because she found herself overwhelmed by fabric.
I asked two friends to join me for the craft-making experience, Lori and Steph. We headed over in the late afternoon, after work, and found ourselves welcomed and encouraged to get creative.
Revonda kept apologizing to me for the simplicity of the craft, saying it wasn’t always like this, but you know what … I liked it. What a great way to use up remnants of fabric lying around, and to add a pop of color to your fall décor.
Since you’ll want to create more than one, here’s what you’ll need:
Select your wooden hoops, and then choose complementary colors of fabric for the pumpkins. Or not. Get crazy. It’s your world.
Place the fabric inside the hoop.
Tighten the hoop and use a pair of sharp scissors to cut around the hoop. There will be a bit at the top, under the tightener, that you may want to hide with greenery or twine, or glue down later.
Find twine, greenery, fake leaves, whatever you want and attach it to the top with a glue gun. Twirl some brown paper into a stem and attach. (Or, you know, you could make use of some of those old wine corks at this point and glue one on top.)
Voila. You’re done.
Here’s what our wooden hoop pumpkins looked like at Bittersweet Country Marketplace.
And here’s what they look like on display in our homes.
Afterward, we went out for food at the local Mexican restaurant and caught up on our comings and goings, and I think we’ve pretty much decided that we would like to do this again.
I was thinking … perhaps this might be a sweet way to remember a loved one. Take an old flannel shirt or cotton garment that belonged to someone who is no longer wearing it, and make a few wooden hoop pumpkins to set around the house.
See Bittersweet Country Marketplace at Facebook.
Publisher/Editor Barbara Baird is a freelance writer in hunting, shooting and outdoor markets. Her bylines are found at several top hunting and shooting publications. She also is a travel writer, and you can follow her at https://www.ozarkian.com. View all posts by Barbara Baird
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