The Philanthropic Pumpkin, a collaboration between Hands on Designs and Lady Dot Creates, is a limited edition kit sold as a fundraiser to benefit Special Olympics IA and the Sioux City Knights Special Olympics delegation. All available kits have been sold.
The kit included everything you needed (with the exception of the DMC floss) to stitch the design and finish it as pictured. I was lucky enough to be able to purchase the kit. Also included are excellent instructions for finishing and assembling the final piece.
I am switching out the included linen for a piece of 16ct white aida which will make the finished piece the same size. Since I did not have all the called for DMC colors, I am using Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe floss for the two shades of orange used. Heirloom Pumpkins is for the darker shade and Gray’s Lily for the lighter one.
And my start on the stitching.
I thought I had finished stitching the top but found out I missed the backstitching on four of the flowers so had to go back and fix that. I decided to read through the finishing instructions again before I started assembling. I decided to enlarge the circle template a bit (120%) so the stitching was not so close to the edge. The clipping around the circle made me a bit nervous so I probably did not clip quite as close as I should have so it is a bit lumpy around the edge but I figure the rickrack will hide most of it and besides pumpkins are NOT perfect circles.
For me, the stitching was much more fun than the finishing but I am happy with the end result. I need to get a stand for it so that is up a bit higher for display.
