Sunday 8 April 2012

Crochet Easter Basket Tutorial

I do love Easter, I guess I always associate this time of year with my April birthday and my mum's birthday too and general happy times.  And of course now that I am married to a March man and have a March daughter there is even more reason to celebrate!


Crochet Easter Basket


We always have an Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday, usually in my mum's garden (which is about ten times the size of our own!)  This year I wanted to make some cute little baskets for the girls to use to store their eggs in (the little ones that is, there's no way these baskets are going to hold the abundance of packaging that comes with the bigger eggs!)  At the same time I have been trying to think of projects to use up my leftover yarn - the result is a pattern which uses only a small amount of yarn and is very quick and easy to make! Enjoy!


Crochet mini egg baskets


Crochet Easter Egg Basket


You need:


Round 1 - Make a magic ring...


Crochet Easter Basket


...Ch3 (counts as 1 dc) and make 11 more dcs into the ring (12 dc)



Crochet Easter Basket


Crochet Easter Basket



Round 2 - Ch3 (counts as 1 dc) – 1 dc in same dc, then 2 dcs in each dc around (24dc). Join with sl st in top of 3ch.


Round 3 - Ch3 (counts as dc), *2 dc in next dc, 1 dc in next dc, repeat from * around (36dc).  Join with sl st in top of 3ch.




Crochet Easter Basket


You should now have a nice flat circle.


Round 4 - Ch3 (counts as dc), 1 dc in next dc and in each dc around (36), join with sl st in top of ch3. 

Round 5 - Repeat Rnd4 (If you want to change colour for this round, as I have done, just tie in your new colour as close to your work as possible before making the Ch3 at the beginning of the round)

Crochet Easter Basket

Round 6 - Ch1 (does not count as sc), sc in same st, 1 sc in next 4, sc2tog,* 1sc in next 5, sc2tog, repeat from *around, sc in last st.

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Crochet Easter Basket
sc2tog
 
Join with sl st in first sc. (31)


Round 7 - Ch1 and turn, sl st in each sc around finishing with sl st in beginning ch1, fasten off (this row helps the top edge sit nicely I find)


Crochet Easter Basket



One cute little basket! You can leave it like this, or add a handle like I have for the grey one...

Crochet Easter Basket

Handle:


(Leave a long tail for sewing)

Ch3, turn, 1 sc in 2nd ch from hook and in next ch.


Ch1 and turn, sc in each sc across (2sc).  Repeat until you have the desired length of handle, fasten off leaving long tail for sewing.

Sew onto side of basket by sewing ends of handle into the tops of the sc row.

Crochet Easter BasketCrochet Easter Basket

Voila!  Cute little chunky baskets ready for your easter egg hunt!  You could of course just display them prettily somewhere to hold jewellery or your keys or loose change. 


Have fun with this and do be sure to let me know how you get on, I would love to hear how you get on with my patterns and tutorials, feedback is incredibly useful!


Crochet mini egg baskets

Happy Easter!

Tuesday 3 April 2012

Meadow Party

Flower bunting

On Saturday Lillia turned 6 and had a "meadow" themed party at home to celebrate.  There were far too many sweet treats of course, with a few carrot sticks and cucumber slices thrown in to balance it out a bit. But most of all there were plenty of games and fun. I had a lot of fun making crochet bunting and other little decorations. The flower bunting above was inspired by this tutorial and it was perfect for a meadow theme.

I made up the pattern for mini bunting and used yarn left over from other projects to make it...

Mini bunting

I was very pleased with this, I really love the colours. In fact all the bunting is still up! I don't think I will take it down until well after Easter is done :) As well as bunting there were many bunches of cheery daffs dotted about the place looking festive...

Bunting and daffodils

I love daffodils. Yellow is my favourite colour and they are only 99p a bunch, so at this time of year I can afford to have fresh flowers in the house!

Bunting and Daffodils

I made a meadow cake of course...

Meadow cake

And I also made plenty of butterfly biscuits...

Butterfly biscuits

...and toadstool muffins...

Toadstool muffins

...and faced with leftover green buttercream icing I decided to create some "meadow muffins" too...!

Meadow muffins

Honestly I think I had eaten a ton of buttercream before 10am just from the odd lick of a spoon or finger! Myum myum! Good job Lillia was too busy making fairy rings using pink helium balloons to notice.

Every guest had their own butterfly biscuit

Every guest had their own butterfly cookie with their name piped on in icing, and we had little colourful windmills scatted about as well as in the party bags. They looked so pretty poking out, I totally forgot to take a photograph of them all lined up, it was just all so manic getting everything ready!

Bunting and daffodils :)

The vase holding the yellow windmill is one of mine by the way, do you like it?

Then of course we had our paper pom poms adding the finishing touch...

Pink paper pom pom

White paper pom pom

We played Pin the Tail on the Cow, musical statues, musical bumps, Pass the Parcel, we had an Easter egg hunt and then there was Wally the Wicked Wasp - our homemade pinata! Sadly I completely forgot to take a proper photo before he was smashed to a pulp by 6 sugar-fuelled 6-year-olds with a rolling pin. But here he is in action...

Wally the Wicked Wasp - our homemade pinata!  Wally the Wicked Wasp - our homemade pinata!

Lillia didn't want the pinata to be anything she liked, like a bumble bee or a toadstool, as she didn't like the idea of whacking it otherwise! Bless her. So a wicked wasp was the solution! He was stuffed full of chocolates and party blowers, they had a great time!

Cocktail umbrellas

It was a tiring but lovely day.  Lillia had a wonderful birthday, I just can't believe she is 6-years-old.  Where did that time go?

Animal candles

The meadow cake went down well!

There is still a bit of cake left so I best get on and help with the eating of it, might be some wine left somewhere in the fridge too :0)

Happy Birthday Lillipops
xx