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My sister-in-law got a cutting machine last spring and decided she and I were going to make matching things. I am the one with the older machine and the half-used vinyl drawer, so naturally the first project landed at my kitchen table, which is where every craft in this family goes to either work out or fall apart.
We started with pumpkins because of course we did. Tote bags, a door mat for her porch, a stack of tea towels for the gift pile. Not a single wall sign in the bunch. And the first thing I learned, the hard way, is that a tiny pumpkin stem on a layered design is the easiest piece in the world to lose. I was weeding the negative bits, got into a rhythm, cut too deep with the hook, and lifted the stem right off with the scrap. Had to recut the whole top layer. She laughed. I did not, yet.
These are the files we ran, in the order we ran them. A couple of the links are affiliate links, so if you grab one I might earn a small cut at no cost to you. Now wash the lint off your mat and let me save you the recut.
The Layered Pumpkin That Started The Whole Mess
This was project one, the one that taught me to slow my hook down. A pumpkin body with a maple leaf sitting on top, built in stacked layers so you glue paper onto paper and it gets this little shadow depth that looks fancier than the effort it took. We did ours in rust and ochre cardstock and propped it against a candle for a photo before it ever became anything useful.
We ended up turning the flattened version into an iron-on for a tote, which it handled fine once I stopped layering and just used the outline. If you are pressing it instead of gluing it, the leaf veins are thin, so weed those with a pin and a lot of patience.
One nitpick: the stem piece is small and it does not have much of a registration mark to line it back up after weeding. I taped a transfer sheet over the whole top so the stem could not wander off again. Lesson paid for in advance, you are welcome.
A Pumpkin Wearing Flowers For The Tea Towels
Floral pumpkin, layered, and this is the one that went on the tea towels we gave away. We cut the smaller flower elements as a single press layer instead of stacking them, because nobody wants ten paper petals on a thing that gets used to dry hands.
On a flour-sack towel the iron-on grabbed beautifully once I figured out the towel needed a hard pre-press to flatten the weave. The flowers read clean, the pumpkin reads soft, it is a nice pairing.
Nitpick: the petal detail is dense, so on a smaller towel it can blob together if you shrink the design too far. We learned to keep it at least palm sized. Anything smaller and the centers of the flowers close up into one dark dot.
Three Pumpkins In A Tower, One Wobble
A stack of pumpkins, smallest on top, the kind of design that looks like a centerpiece even when it is glued flat on cardstock. My sister-in-law wanted this one big for her entry table, so we sized it up and it nearly maxed my mat.
Glued in layers it has real presence, three pumpkin bodies in graduating ambers with the stems poking up. We backed ours on chipboard so it would stand without curling, because plain cardstock at that size flops.
The nitpick is the alignment between the three bodies. The file gives you the layers but the overlap is judgment, and our first glue-up had the top pumpkin sliding off to the left like it had somewhere better to be. Dry-fit the whole stack before any glue touches it.
The Florals Got Fussy On This One
Another floral pumpkin, more autumn leaves worked into it, and honestly we bought this because it was close enough to the other floral one that we figured we would mix and match pieces. We did, sort of.
It cut well on 65 lb paper for the under layers and 110 lb for the top so the heavier piece would not sag. We used the leaf elements off this file on a couple of other projects, which is the quiet benefit of layered designs, you steal parts.
Nitpick: there are a lot of tiny internal cuts in the leaves, and on my older machine the blade dragged a little and left two leaves with a hangnail of paper I had to trim by hand. If your blade is dull this is the file that will tell you.
Built For A Laser, Bent To My Will
This one is drawn for laser cutting, which I do not own, so this is me being honest: I do not have a laser, my sister-in-law’s cousin does, and we sent it over to get one cut in thin plywood for her porch. The intricate fretwork is the whole point and a paper machine cannot really do it justice.
What came back was a pumpkin-and-leaf panel that she leaned by the door and it looked like it cost a lot more than it did. The cut detail is genuinely lovely in wood.
Nitpick: because it is laser-native, the thin connecting bridges are very thin, and one little leaf tip snapped in shipping before it ever got mounted. If you cut this, leave the fragile pieces attached to a backing until the last second. Do not ask how I know the shipping part.
Leaves Piled On A Pumpkin, Piled On My Table
More of a leaf-forward design with the pumpkin as the base, lots of overlapping autumn leaves. We cut this for a card front, of all things, scaled small and glued onto a folded note for the gift bags.
Layered down small it is genuinely charming, the leaves overlap so even a sloppy glue job hides under the next leaf. Forgiving design, I like a forgiving design.
Nitpick: scaled that small the stems on the individual leaves are hair-thin and a few of them tore as I weeded. I switched to weeding from the leaf body outward instead of pulling the scrap across the stems, and the tear rate dropped. Direction matters more than people admit.
The Monogram Towels Everybody Suddenly Wanted
Split monogram letters with a little pumpkin tucked into the gap, so you drop a name or initial in the middle. The second she saw these on a tea towel, every relative wanted their initial on something. We made a lot of towels.
This is an iron-on workhorse. We cut letters in a deep rust flock vinyl and the texture against a cream towel is the thing people kept touching. The split design leaves room for a name without crowding.
Nitpick: this is where the heat-press temperature guessing began. My little press has a dial, not a readout, and the first towel’s vinyl peeled at the corners because I underdid it. The file is fine, my guesswork was the problem. Press a test scrap, count the seconds out loud, and write down what worked.
A Pumpkin Fence For The Porch Edge
Another laser-drawn file, a row of round pumpkins along a little fence cutout, meant to sit as a freestanding piece. This one also went to the cousin’s laser and came back in plywood for the porch step.
In wood it makes a low decorative run you prop along an edge, and it photographs better in person than the flat thumbnail suggests. We stained ours a touch darker before sealing it for the outdoors.
Nitpick: it is wide, so if your cut bed is small you will be splitting this into sections and gluing the fence back together, and the seam shows if you are not careful about where you break it. Break it behind a pumpkin, not between two of them, so the seam hides in the bulk.
Hello Pumpkin, Now On A Door Mat
A hello pumpkin sign design, the lettering with a pumpkin worked in. The shape of this one is what made it onto her coir door mat, which is a whole adventure I was not prepared for.
We used it as a stencil over the door mat and pounced outdoor paint through it. The lettering is clean enough to hold a crisp stencil edge, which not every script does once you cut it from sticky vinyl.
Nitpick: the counters in the letters, the little closed centers in the o and the p, those need to be saved and placed back by hand on a stencil, and I lost the center of one letter into the coir bristles, which ate it. Tweezers and a steady hand. A door mat does not forgive a smudge.
The Bundle We Kept Going Back To
A whole Thanksgiving bundle, lots of small designs in one file, and this is the one that earned its keep because once the pumpkin season was handled we still had turkeys and leaves and little sayings to pull from for everything else.
We used bits of this on gift tags, a couple more towels, and a banner for her Friendsgiving. The value of a bundle is you stop hunting for files and just open the one folder.
Nitpick: it is a lot of separate pieces, and the bundle dropped onto my machine as a pile that needed sorting, so I spent an evening just naming and arranging cuts before I made anything. Worth it, but block out the sorting time. A bundle is a project before it is a project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I print these at home?
These are cut files, so they are really meant to be cut on a craft machine rather than printed flat, though a few of the layered ones can be printed and glued by hand if you do not have a machine.
If you only have a printer, look for the layered paper designs and skip the laser-cut ones, since those need an actual cutter to mean anything.
What file formats do these designs come in?
They download as the standard cut-file formats your machine software reads, the layered paper ones and the laser ones both, so you can pull them straight into your design space without converting anything.
The bundle especially comes as a folder of separate pieces, so do not be surprised when you open it and there is a lot to sort through before you cut.
Do I need a Cricut or Silhouette to use these?
For the cleanest result, yes, a cutting machine is what these are built for, and the layered designs in particular get their depth from precise cuts you would struggle to do by hand.
The laser-cut files are a different animal and want an actual laser, which is why we farmed ours out to a relative who owns one rather than fighting them on a paper machine.
Can I use these files for a small craft business?
Most indie design shops sell these with a license that covers small handmade-business use, but the terms live on the product page and they do vary, so read before you start selling towels at the holiday market.
We made our towels as gifts, not for sale, so I did not push the limits, but if you plan to sell, check the license on each file rather than assuming the bundle and the single designs share the same rules.
Before You Print
We ran every one of these across two machines and one borrowed laser, and the pile of pumpkin totes and tea towels on her dining chair at the end of it was genuinely a sight. The split monogram towels were the runaway favorite, in case you only have time for one project.
Go weed gently. Save the stem. Press a test scrap before you ruin a good towel, because I did not, and I have a peeling corner to prove it.
