This is the result after 5 hours of work carving on this pumpkin! I still can't believe I pulled this off!!

I was given the task of carving the pumpkin for Halloween this year, and I decided to do things a little differently. I wanted to see if I could carve Stitch into the pumpkin.

So first I searched for a suitable image of Stitch to copy and found one in the How to draw Lilo and Stitch book. Scanned that image, blew it up to full page size, and printed it out. Now I had my template for the image you see here.

I then found a nice flat spot on the pumpkin, and taped the sides of the printed image to the pumpkin. Cut the corners with scissors to account for the pumpkin's roundness, then taped the top and bottom.

Gutted the pumpkin after that (of course), and once it was all cleaned out it was time for the hard part: Carving this image into the pumpkin.

So i loaded up my Paint Shop Pro and edited the digital image in various fashions, recolouring and drawing new lines (which would later become cuts on the pumpkin) and found a solution that worked.

Back to the pumpkin...using a thumbtack i poked holes along the lines for the inside of the ear, the nose, the area around stitch's eye, stitch's eye reflection, and his teeth. These would be the areas to be cut out. Then took a small knife and recut along the perforations I had just created. Then went over it all once again, cutting finally all the way through and removing these areas.

Now I had to make the outlines, and the difference here was that i had to cut all the way through the pumpkin, but i had to do so in a way that wouldn't actually separate the image from the pumpkin itself, elsewise I'd be left with a very large, but empty, stitch-shaped hole. I cut the lines in the same fashion as before, but instead of completing each line I'd leave gaps to hold the whole thing together. That phase took forever.

Then came the part where I had to widen those cuts to allow light through. I grabbed a flat screwdriver and tapped it into the lines, bit by bit, widening them. Then took the knife again, cut away thin bits of pumpkin and carefully widened the lines, all while burning a candle inside the pumpkin so that i could see how much light was coming through.

When I was satisfied I washed the pumpkin to remove bits of matter that had collected inside and in the carving itself, placed a bigger candle in, and finally took a look at the finished result, which you see here!

I really am shocked that I managed to make this work and have it look as good as it does. I mean, it's not the best carving in the world, but, for my first attempt at a "complex" pumpkin carving, I think it turned out pretty good. All in all 5 hours of working very patiently and carefully. Phew, glad it's done. I just wish pumpkins would last longer than they do. Fortunately I never had to risk this one getting destroyed by vandals, as by the time I completed it, it was too late to put the pumpkin outside. It's just as well, it's safer indoors anyway!

Stitch (c) Disney
Carving (c) Me