Vintage Easter Craft Inspiration

I have been well most of this winter even with the girls getting the flu -strain B and numerous colds. However, my body finally succumbed to an awful head cold. I have however become a netti pot fan! 

A couple of evenings ago, I really needed to do some creative work to ease my spirit. I dragged out some materials that I've been hoarding for awhile - vintage tart tins and yarn cones. I searched my random Easter ephemera and scoured Pinterest for some ideas. Here is my spin on vintage Easter decor! A number of these will be carefully wrapped today and sent to those I love.  

 

Easter Cupcakes!

Mmm... Easter treats by far are my absolute favorite! I love the colors, I love chocolate and honestly I do enjoy nibbling the ears off milk chocolate bunnies. I've been searching Pinterest for some cupcakes to knock my socks off. I love single serving desserts -- helps me with portion control and it's really easy to ship the rest off with my husband to work the next day.

As I was searching on Pinterest, I mentioned these Cadbury Egg Cupcakes to my hubby and he was literally drooling before I could finish my sentence. He's a Cadbury Egg maniac! Well my short search was over, I don't think I would be allowed to make anything else. These amazing creations were created by Pizzazzerie - head on over for the recipe.

Now what color to decorate them with?? 

Easter Pillow Tutorials

Am I the only one that gets a little nutty when Easter lands in March? In my brain, Easter is in April, that way I have proper time to enjoy it. Alas, it is in just a few weeks. Time for the Easter Bunny to get moving on baskets, decor and treats.

If you are looking to add to your Easter holiday decor, I have a couple of pillow tutorials that you may want to check out -- everything from faux chenille to free motion sketching. Running short on time like me? You can use these techniques on gifts for Mothers and Father's Day!

1.) Shabby Chic Eggs

2.) Foundation Pieced Cross Pillow - this also makes a beautiful Baptism/Christening gift!

3.) Faux Chenille  and Reverse Applique - Good or Bad Egg Pillows

4.) Free Motion Sketched - Bunnies at Church Pillow

5.) Crochet Embellished Easter Egg Pillow

Hippity Hop - Chocolate Bunny Mixed Media Art

I started this piece a couple weeks ago. I had some spare time and just was playing. When I first started with  fine art mediums, back in high school, my favorite was oil pastels. I still have a large supply of them and thought it would be fun to try them again. The first layer reminds me of jelly beans - bright, yummy rainbow of colors. From there I built up several layers of texture and finished with my favorite Easter candy - a large, chocolate rabbit. Just makes me want to bite the ears off! Hippity Hop  is a much sweeter piece than I've been doing lately and every time I see it, I want a handful of candy.

A Sweet Easter

Happy Easter! Sorry for the late post, but I've been enjoying this beautiful Sunday with my sweet family. Did you have a wonderful day? We sure did! I love Easter- I love dyeing eggs, hiding them for my kids to find, the delicious candy, the beautiful little dresses and bonnets, and a Mass full of promise.

We dyed our eggs last night, nothing like waiting till the last minute. Right now though, Kiddo is the only one old enough to really help dye and her attention span is.. well that of a 4 year old.. I think we were done in about 30 minutes.

And the blurry picture below, yeah that about sums up our morning (and yes Kiddo is in Christmas pajamas and Baby is in Thanksgiving pajamas.. that's how we roll). It actually was one of the sweetest mornings ever. My husband and I awoke to the sounds of Kiddo squealing with delight and gathering the eggs as fast as she could. Luckily Baby awoke soon after and was able to grab a few eggs as well.

We quickly rounded them up and headed off to Mass for a sweet sermon and yet another egg hunt. 

And one more picture of my Kiddo with the Easter Bunny.. Baby was sobbing in Daddy's arms.

I didn't even come close to eating clean today. I adore Easter candy and have been looking forward to my brunch at the Market Street Grill. It was a yummy day! To top it off, I made the Hubby and I some martinis. We had a ton of grapefruits and not sure what to do with them. I don't particular enjoy eating them, but I have issues with wasting food. The answer? Pink grapefruit martinis!

Pink Grapefruit Martinis
2 oz Absolut Citron
2 oz ginger ale
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh grapefruit juice
1/2 tablespoon grenadine
sugar cube

1.) Place a sugar cube at the bottom of a martini glass.
2.) Fill a martini shaker with ice and remaining ingredients, then shake-shake-shake and pour.
3.) Enjoy.. mmmm

Well yeah it didn't make a dent in our grapefruit supply, but it sure was yummy!
Happy Easter!

Fun Easter Projects From 2011

I ended up not being ready to quilt again last night. No, I'm not afraid of my machine - the swelling and pain was just a little too much to try to work around. In the meantime, I am presenting my Easter project tutorials & freebies from last year. I did a ton! Apparently Easter is great inspiration for me!

Hope you enjoy! Many of these projects are on my Tutorial page for future reference.

 FREEBIE - Easter Subway Art File

Edible Easter Basket Dessert 

Thread Egg Decor

Egg & Bunny Tail Garland

(A great projects for kids!)

Golden Egg Topiary

Peeps Wreath

Peek A Boo Bunny Lamp

Pottery Barn Knockoff - Egg Hunt Garden Stake

Eggcellent Series #5 - Crochet Easter Egg

Thank you so much for joining me this week. I hope you have learned some new techniques and have been inspired to create a pillow. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me any time.

Today I will you show you how to crochet on an applique. However today of all days, because that's how it works, neither of my two sweet kids would nap... so I originally planned to do 3 pillows - 2 bunnies and 1 egg.. and I had time to do the one egg..  Gah! Heartbreaking for me, as I was really excited to bring you this technique. I may revisit it again before Easter with all 3 pillows, photographed beautiful with abundant sunlight. Until then..

Materials Needed:

Plain store bought pillow cover

Scrap fabric for applique

Scrap piece of fusible webbing

Perle cotton - cream and pink

US 7 crochet hook

Embroidery needle

 Step One: (Boo.. I know it's the bunny, but I've been working on these all week and thought I would have all three done..) Anywho.. Draw out your applique shape and make sure it will fit on to your pillow cover.

 Step Two: Iron on the fusible webbing to the wrong side of the applique fabric.

 Step Three: Trace and cut out your applique shape; iron on to the pillow cover front.

 Step Four: Straight stitch the applique down to the cover.

 Step Five: Using the perle cotton and embroidery needle, backstitch around the perimeter of the applique. You want to try to keep your stitch as close to 1/4 as possible. It doesn't have to be exactly 1/4", but try to be consistent with the stitch size. It is important that the crochet hook can slide underneath the stitch, but that the stitch is not so large that it sags off the fabric.

 Step Six: With your hook and perle cotton, single crochet in every stitch around the perimeter. Slipstitch the last stitch to the first.

 Step Seven:  Draw out your design on the applique with an erasable pen.

 Step Eight: Backstitch the design with your perle cotton and then single crochet in each stitch.

And there you are! I love this added dimension to quilting & sewn projects. I think this pillow would look awesome with some crayon tinting too.. Hmmm. Another week of pillow projects? Nah.. ;o)

Have some amazing Easter projects of your own? Come on back tomorrow to share!

What's coming next week?
I'll share the highlights of some my past Easter projects and show you how to do another crochet/sewing tutorial for a ruffled diaper cover - perfect for spring photo shoots..

Eggcellent Series #4 - Bunnies At Church

I can not believe there is only more day left in my pillow series. This week has flown by! I hope that you have been inspired to try a pillow, maybe even one of the tutorials I created. It has been fun and completely fulfilled my crazy desire to create a bunch of Easter pillows.

Today, I present "Bunnies at Church".. isn't it sweet? This is a vintage pattern from Needlecrafter - you can download it by clicking here. There are a ton of awesome vintage patterns to play with.

Materials Needed: 
Fat quarter of white fabric
(2) fat quarters of spring pattern fabric
13" square of fusible batting
Polyfill stuffing
Crayola crayons
hand needle & thread

Step One: Print out the embroidery pattern from the site listed above.
 
Step Two: Grab your erasable pen and trace the pattern on to the white fabric.

 Step Three: Using your white crayon, color in wherever you plan on tinting with crayons.

 Here is my completed piece; this provides as a surface treatment for your tinting.

 Step Four: Color in and have fun! Now colors may slightly change after you free motion and heat set it. If you compare this to my final pillow, you can see that the colors become more subdued.

 Step Five: Now it's time to free motion! Free motion drawing has a very distinctive look, especially when you are doing it with your conventional sewing machine. I love it, I'm crazy about it..but not everyone is. If it is not your cup of tea, feel free to complete this embroidery by hand. If you like it like me, here are some tips:
* lower your feed dogs, if you can't do it manually on your sewing machine then you can tape a business card over them while you work.
*check to see if your machine has special settings for free motion - mine did and I didn't know for about 6 months..doh!
*some lower the stitch to 0, but I don't
* try to be consistent with your speed on the pedal and moving the fabric.

 Step Six: Now it's time to heat set the crayon and remove the pen marks. Place a sheet of copy paper on top of the embroidery and heat set with a very hot iron. You will know you are done when the crayon has left some color on the paper.

 Step Seven: To complete the cover you will need to cut the following pieces and sew as seen below.
Fabric A - (2) 2"x10"
Fabric B - (2) 2"x13"

 Step Eight: This pillow is just decorative and the cover will not be removable. I didn't use a pillow form and simply stuffed it with polyfill. For this reason I wanted to give the cover more stability. I cut a 13" piece of fusible batting and ironed on to the wrong side of the cover.

Step Nine: Cut a 13" square of one of the spring pattern fabrics. Pin the front and back covers right side together. Sew the around the border with a 1/4" seam allowance and leave a 3" open space on the bottom of the pillow. Clip the corners up to the stitching line and pull right side out.

 Step Ten: Gently fill the pillow with polyfill stuffing to your desired puffiness. With a needle and hand quilting thread, sew up the 3" hole with a ladder stitch.

And there she is! I love that you can enjoy hand embroidery patterns in a fraction of the time. I love free motion sketching and use it lot with raw edge applique as well.

Come on back tomorrow for my final pillow tutorial in the series.. crochet on fabric..mmmm, my favorite!

Eggcellent Series #3 - Are You Good Egg or a Bad Egg Pillows

Are you a good or bad egg? When I started on my Easter egg pillow craze, these came to my mind. I think they are so fun. They are another reverse applique / faux chenille technique like my Shabby Chic egg pillow. This one has a cleaner edge in case you are not a fan of the free motion sketch motif of the other one.

Materials needed for both pillows:
(2) 14" pillow forms
1/2 yard of linen
1/2 yard of spring quilting cotton
1 yard of light weight fusible interfacing
large scraps of fabric for the faux chenille eggs
(2) invisible zippers

Step One: Cut out (2) 14" squares of linen and (2) 14" squares of the cotton fabric.

 Step Two: Create your applique shape template. For this pillow I did a single extra large egg. Now pick out the fabric you will want to use as the applique. Stack four layers of the fabric, making sure the applique shape will easily fit within. Next draw 45 degree angle diagonal marks every 1/2 inch apart (see photo below). The lines are closer in this tutorial and it will make for a fluffier chenille. 

 Step Three: Sew down every marked line. Cut end to end down the middle of each marked line, only through the top three layers. Do NOT cut through all four layers. There is a chenille cutter on the market that is perfect for this task, but it is not necessary for this small project.

 Step Four: Take a chenille brush or unused toothbrush and severely agitate the freshly cut fabric. I find it helps if you squirt a bit of water on the fabric while you agitate. Isn't that fluffy goodness.. love it!


Step Five: With an erasable pen, sketch your applique shape on the front cover. Place the faux chenille behind the front cover. You will have the chenille right side up against the wrong side of the linen.

 Step Six: Pin the faux chenille to keep it in place.

On only the linen, cut out the egg shape. With a satin stitch, sew down the border of the egg shape.

 Step Seven: On the back of the cover, cut away the excess faux chenille fabric.

 Step Eight: Cut out (4) 14" squares of fusible light weight interfacing. Iron on the to the wrong sides of both covers and backs.

Step Nine: Free motion quilt "the good egg" and the "the bad egg" on the pillow covers.

 

Step Ten: Install the invisible zippers on the bottoms of the covers. Then pin the front & back covers right sides together. With the zipper unzipped about halfway, sew around the perimeter with a 1/4" seam allowance. Cut the corners up to the stitching line and pull it right side out.

That's it! Super easy and so much fun..

If you like the look of free motion sketching, you have to come back tomorrow! I'll show you how to convert a hand embroidery pattern into free motion, crayon tinted fun..

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