Fall Garden Sachets – An Afternoon Project

My herb garden is overflowing this fall. I tried planting a few new types of herbs last spring, mostly mints for making herbal tea.

They seemed to really thrive on my sunny deck. I had an abundance of Lemon Verbena and Moroccan Mint and they started to seed. They had the most amazing scent.

I decided to trim them back and dry the leaves for something . . . I didn’t know what. How about some kind of autumn garden sachet? Pumpkins? Maybe it was time for another play day.

I gathered some supplies: leftover wool, some lovely linen, pipe cleaners, jute for trim, and some walnut shells I had purchased for pin cushion filling.

Let’s start with a circle, nothing perfect of course. I tend to like wonky. We will need a stem, maybe a triangle?

Mark some lines to give the pumpkin shape. I used this as the inside so I don’t have to worry about my markings showing.

Use a heavy jeans thread to baste a running stitch across each line – a knot on one end and a long tail on the other to gather things up later.

Run another basting stitch all the way around outer perimeter of the circle. A different color thread helps to keep track of all the different loose strings. Gather the basted circle up into a little pouch.

Make sure all the loose threads are on the outside of the pouch.

Fill the pouch with a mixture of walnut shells and crushed herbs. You could use rice, instead of walnut shells. I actually added some batting to mine also, so that I didn’t use up all my walnut shells.

Gather all those loose strings and pull them as tight as possible. Knot them together and poke the strings inside the pouch.

Look at the underside. It’s starting to look like a pumpkin!

Uh – oh, how am I going to do this stem? Fold the wool triangle in half, stitch it up, then turn it inside out. I use my favorite sewing tool for this – a chopstick! I keep lots of them handy with different size tips. Fold the pipe cleaner in half, and then again, and twist it to fit inside the stem.