What to sew with the kids to prepare for Easter?
This year, Easter falls on March 31! So there’s still a few weeks to get sewing for the season.
From baskets for egg hunts to easy, fun decorations… Here are a few ideas for sewing with the kids in preparation for this chocolate-filled weekend!
Sew a pretty basket for hunting eggs
It’s tradition: at Easter, eggs are hidden in the garden for children and adults alike. Why not get the little ones involved in making a basket or bag to collect their finds?
If the children are very young, avoid getting them to handle scissors or a sewing machine. Instead, get them involved in the decorating process, adding designs with paint or felt-tip pens, and letting their creativity run wild.
If you want to have a pretty surface to decorate, you can sew a tote bag, which is quick and easy to make.
To make it fit better and keep it off the floor, simply reduce the size of the handles and bag.
To make a small tote bag, you can follow Sarah Bricolette’s free pattern, which explains each step in pictures. You can choose a white or light-colored fabric and let the children draw, or sketch shapes (an egg, a rabbit…) that they can fill in by finger-painting.
If the children are older, they can help with some of the steps involved in making the egg basket: cutting, some simple sewing… In this case, you can choose more complicated shapes or decorate an existing bag or basket with cut-outs in colored felt that you sew or glue on. You can use our homemade tutorial or Alice Gerfault’s cute rabbit basket pattern.
Make decorations for the home
Sewing decorations to hang around the house for Easter is a simple project that’s easy to do with children. The first step is to bring along fabric offcuts and pieces of colored felt. Then, using a felt-tip pen, ask the children to trace shapes reminiscent of Easter or springtime: bunny, egg, bees, flowers… and cut them out of the fabric and felt using serrated scissors. With these scissors, you can do away with the tedious step of overcasting.
If the children are old enough, you can let them handle them and cut out the shapes of their choice.
Then place the main fabric against the felt and sew them together 5mm from the edge. Don’t forget, if you want to hang them, to add a thin link (a piece of wool, ribbon, cord…) between the two layers of fabric (on the top of the decoration).
To decorate the garden and make a change from chocolate, you can also sew fabric eggs, which are also a great way of recycling those little fabric offcuts you don’t know what to do with. Children can decide on their own color and material combinations, for example, by following Cindy the seamstress’s video tutorial.
Easter costume ideas
To make a super-easy costume with the kids, why not sew bunny ears? It’s very simple: take a headband base (you can find a headband lying around in your bathroom cupboards) and sew two ear shapes onto it, reinforced with thick fusible webbing and thin wire to keep them straight. Go to the free pattern from Tissus Hemmers to get an idea of the dimensions.
To complete this outfit, you can sew an oval of bouclette fabric onto a t-shirt. Using, for example, white faux fur on a pink t-shirt, or white bouclette fabric on a grey t-shirt. Then choose a pair of leggings in the same color as the t-shirt, and sew a little round tail onto them using a pompom or a round piece of fabric.
It’s a quick and easy costume to make, and one that will keep the kids busy all day!
And what about your own Easter sewing plans? What are your plans for this egg-hunting weekend?
