Patterns on pumpkins

We carved three pumpkins this year – all with a floral theme. The biggest one has a reworking of Orla Kiely’s signature print on it – I thought of this idea a few weeks ago and had been looking forward to carving it ever since.

I had been reading up on carving pumpkins in my Martha Stewart magazines, where I kept seeing mention of using ‘hole cutters’ for cutting neat circles. In the accompanying photos, these look like short lengths of copper pipe that are sealed off with rubber at one end and cut at an angle at the other end. I dutifully trekked to our local hardware shop to buy some. The man serving me was very patient and showed me the options they had – which were expensive and looked nothing like the Martha ones. It was all going well until he asked me what surface I was wanting to cut holes into. I quietly muttered something about pumpkins, and was soon being all but laughed out of the shop. It was all very good natured but embarrassing nonetheless! And so instead of hole cutters, what I ended up with was a serrated tool for removing the cores from apples. The holes it cuts are perfectly round but uniform in size, which meant I had to alter my plans a little in terms of the patterns.

The pattern on the right hand pumpkin is a bit of a tribute to a Habitat lampshade I have, which has abstract organic shapes like this on it, in a repeating pattern.