Small Easter gifts

 

In early March, Morris and Sons advertised a range of Corinne Lapiere kits for Easter gifts. I liked the look of them and figured I could just about make them before Easter, if they arrived in good time. 

I ordered them on 11th March and they arrived on the 16th. I set to work straight away, beginning with the rabbit inside a carrot, which is absurd. I thought my health-conscious grandson might enjoy it (he did!)

It was a lot of fun to stitch, but did require a bit of fiddling.

I chose the beehive next because it had more embroidery. It also had 15 tiny felt leaves to attach. I’m glad I ignored the instruction to cut everything out of the felt before starting. There’s no way I could have managed not to lose some of them. It was also easier to embroider the main body before cutting out, holding the whole felt sheet in your hand, rather than a piece less than 3” square.

Instructions  were only for embroidery on one side, but I added to the back as well

. 

After that I tackled the chicken.

This was  embroidered on both sides. Again, I embroidered it before cutting out the pieces. This was nicely varied. Construction requires patience, pins and a little dexterity.

Then came rabbits. The instructions were for making one in each of three felt colours. Apart from facial features they were not embroidered. I decided they could do with a little embroidery. I had by now decided to give these to the girls. It was clear I could get at least two, and possibly three, from each felt colour. I thought I should embroider each one with a different motif.

On the first one, I chose a native red daisy

then some sprigs of wattle.

then wisteria.

After adding a bottlebrush to one side of the next one, I hesitated to repeat it on the other side. It seemed not only unnecessary, but somehow to detract from the first one.

The same applied to the lemon tree.  One is enough.

These are all quite small, about 2" without the ears.

                                                          

My favourite of the kits, however, turned out to be the last, the Star-Gazing Hare. I had to look up the mythology.  The Star Gazing Hare was the companion of the goddess Eostre, from whom we get Easter. It became a talisman for renewal, Spring, beginnings, fertility. 

She carries a star and a telescope and gazes at the sky.  The body stitching, rounds and rounds of running stitch, was a bit repetitive, but it's a charming figure with a most interesting story. 

 

I found this basket in the Frewville supermarket. It was just the thing for transporting these gifts. 

I added bookmark tags to each figure with the recipient's name and put them in the basket, along with some Ukrainian Easter eggs and some nests. 

They were well received.

There's enough felt to make the best part of another set. 

I've also bought a few more Corinne Lapiere kits while Morrison's have them in stock. It's a luxury. As you can see, I really like them.

               

Feather and Fan Comfort Shawl

I was given these three skeins of wool by Nomad Yarns for my birthday. As the labels testify, they are grown in South Australia, dyed with plants, and milled across the border in Victoria.The three colours are Madder no.1 and no.2 and Cochineal no1.

There were 1180 metres in the three skeins and I looked for a pattern that would use it all. A feather and fan shawl was a no-brainer, since I could continue until the wool ran out.

The first task was to find my swift and wind it into balls.   

The pattern, as most triangular shawls do, began with three stitches. I thought the colours invited bands of colour.

It wasn't difficult stitching once the six row pattern was imprinted in my brain. It took quite a while - about six weeks of stitching. I did do a bit of unravelling. By the end there were 570 stitches on the needle, and the brain can easily switch from purl to knit in the middle of a row without realising it.  

It's finished - soft and drapey, and I think the pattern works. 

I have recently had a dress made from some metres of orange silk. I'm wondering if the shawl is a sufficient match to render the dress wearable in cooler weather. Haven't decided yet.

Manteau Capelet

Back in September of last year, when I used a swift to wind the yarn for my for my Spritz cardigan,  I dug out other hanks of yarn in my stash, and wound them as well. One of the was a hank of gorgeous purple silk. I had already marked a pattern for a Manteau Capelet in the book on the right as suitable for this yarn, but it required another ball of matching, beaded yarn.          It's different to the listed yarn, but should work.                    

I managed to find some of Louisa Harding's Grace Hand Beaded  - a silk/merino mix with glass beads twisted in on a fine acrylic thread - at Yarns on Collie in WA.  

When it arrived I lined it all up with the pattern before getting out the swift. 

I started it as soon as the cardigan was finished. Once I had the beaded border done and started on the centre, I used it as a grab-and-go project in between embroidering Kasia Jacquot panels.

During this time we went through several weeks of heat wave with some temperatured in the mid 40Cs. The silk content of this yarn made it quite pleasant to knit on all but the most extreme days. 

I misread the pattern in several places and did not go back to correct.  There should be more open lace in the top rows.

As I got towards the end of the bottom band it was hard to judge how long the yarn would last. I made a judgement and cast off loosely with a regular cast off. I tried it on, but as I expected, it was tighter than comfortable. I had not used all the yarn, so I undid the cast-off, rejoined the yarn and used an elastic cast off.

Although the finished shape appears trianglular when flat, it moulds nicely to the body. It's not as defined as the pattern illustration, partly because I missed several rows of holes, but also because my yarn is much softer.

Veronica generously modelled it for me and it looks great. No one will want or need to wear it for the next 6-8 weeks, but I think it will get used once Autumn sets in. I'm very pleased to have had the chance to try both the silk yarn and the beaded. The twinkle doesn't show in the photos. It looks quite good and is very pleasant to wear.

Olga bag

This is the Kasia Jacquot Olga panel, mounted ready to stitch. Now that birthday projects are completed I am back to the remaining 6 of these panels I have matched with bags.

I began with the leaves. There are a lot of them! 

I worked the first one in a dense leaf stitch, but moved to fly stitch, since it didn't make much difference to the look. 

I used the full 6 strands as Kasia recommends, running out of thread and substituting a slightly darker shade. I think that works. I used two strands for the veins in an attempt to mimic the print. I think that works too.

The stems were next - a relaxing, flowing task after so many leaves.

There was variety in the flowers, even though the stitch was fundamentally satin stitch. The shapes are cleverly varied, which keeps the stitching interesting.

I was tempted to work the blue circles with French knots but in the end stuck with the suggested satin stitch. I'm pleased I did. I think it provides unity, rather than raising the question What are those things?     

I get enormous satisfaction from these panels. They are the perfect mix for me of ideas and improvising. The colours in this one are harmonious and soothing. Once I've got that I can  work within the parameters.

Out of the hoop and ironed, the panel needed to be slightly trimmed to square it off,

I had chosen a blue bag and machined the panel on, deciding it needed a border for the transition. I tossed up between an unobtrusive blue or a defining orange. I initially thought blue, but changed my mind at the last moment.

I think it was the right call.

I find it very hard to machine the panels on dead centre. I pin them but think tacking might be the solution.  It has been ironed, but will benefit from hanging for a while.  

Let's see what's next.

Lucky Last Veggie Bag

I stitched the first of these bags back in November 2024 and have been using it as my main shopping bag ever since. To be absolutely sure it is a tough as I believe, I threw it in the washing machine on the weekend. It came out clean and undamaged.

While I complained at the time about the difficulty of stitching through tough canvas, the utility of the finished bag won me over and I ordered two more as gifts. One, that featured flowers rather than vegetables, was completed and gifted in August 2025. This month I have been stitching the third, back to the original vegetables,  for a family member’s birthday.

It uses a very small selection of stitches, mostly stem and straight stitch, with a little bit of buttonhole and French knots. The heavy canvas does not accommodate much more. 

I began with greens. The kit provides only 3 shades. This time I was less concerned about working out the recommended combinations. The instructions, like the stitches and threads, are minimal, so I got the general idea and winged it. Seems to have worked.

I used a 12” hoop to get as many of the 20 vegetables on as possible. Some placements tested the capacity of the hoop, because, with embroidery close to the bag edge, the hoop had to accommodate the thickness of the strap. You can see the outer ring is not fitting completely over the inner one. Nevertheless, it held tight.

The fun one, of course, is the corn, with a hundred or so French knots. I struggled a bit to choose the colours for the garlic.I was tempted to introduce the mauve, but stuck, in the end, with the suggested palette. There is, I think, too much brown on the parsnips, the tan colour night have been better - or just more of the beige. While they are recognisably vegetables, it might take a bit of guessing to arrive at parsnip. 

The biggest challenge was perhaps the leek. I downloaded a couple of photos but really needed a few in-between shades to get the colour gradation right.

I reckon it looks fine on the finished bag, which will be seen, noticed, but not scrutinised.

I hope the bag proves as useful to the recipient as mine is to me. It is for everyday use, to bring cheer and help with one of the most mundane of tasks.

All hail the bag! I love it.

Hanka Robertson’s Drawstring Purse from Piecework magazine.

I wanted to stitch this as soon as I saw it in the Autumn 2025 Piecework magazine. Hanka Robertson has adapted old costumes and Slavic pattern magazines to come up with this drawstring purse.  I loved the shape, the primary colours and the association with folk embroidery. I didn’t want to interrupt my run of embroidered craft bags, but I did want embroidered this.

I’m not a huge fan of Aida, but could see immediately that this one would look good stitched on it, although the instructions specified 28 count linen. I thought I had a supply of Aida. I was wrong. I needed more DMC stranded thread for the Kasia Jacquot bags, so visited Create in Stitch for the thread and also bought two packs of Aida - one cream, one black - all they had. 

As a break from the Jacquot embroidery, I marked up the cream Aida for the Robertson design.

It sat for a bit before I took a break from the Jacquot bags, mounted the Aida in a hoop and got to work. I began with the red and worked mostly half-cross stitches, enough outlines to keep me correctly oriented and able to repeat motifs.

It was surprisingly slow work. There are a lot of stitches in a relatively small space. Our recent heatwave gave me the indoor hours needed to finish the colourwork.

However, the pattern demanded every segment be outlined in black perle 12,  and that took considerable time.

Another 47C day provided the opportunity. I spent the best part of the day outlining the centre pattern. The following day, a mere 40C, I spent reading and only completed the inner border outline in the evening while listening to the television.

That was probably a mistake. It is surprisingly difficult to accurately stitch an outline on Aida, harder, I suspect, than on linen. The structure of Aida makes it easy to miss the hole and split the fabric. There is a section of the border where I’ve missed the hole several times over a couple of inches - no doubt checking the screen rather than the embroidery. I’m not planning on correcting it. 

So here’s the complete block finished . The outlining was worth the effort, pushing the pattern forward.

That left two rows of cross stitch for the ribbon casing and one for the top edge - all requiring an outline below and above.  Very little of this was achievable in the hoop, so hand- holding required. 

I found a suitable lining fabric and cut it to size before washing and blocking the embroidery. I was hoping the process would soften the Aida, but I was disappointed. 

 Since the ribbon casing needed to be stitched to the backing in order to form the casing, it seemed more sensible to stitch the black outline on the machine. That required a slow and steady pace. The result was not as neat as hand-stitching as can be seen here, but was, I  think, the right decision. 

The casing also required two insertion points for the ribbon, one on either side.

I machined the lining into  a bag, inserted it and stitched the 

top edge to the Aida on the inside.

I used the whole piece of Aida, making the bag more rectangular rather the one in Piecework. I think that's OK. I do want the bag to be useful, Perhaps I should bave centred it vertically, but it's not critical.

While the pattern used red ribbon for the cord,  I thought it called for a twisted cord. I made two, with a strand of each of the colours. 

Some red tassels from a workshop came in handy.  The cords could be a heavier, but I am not replacing them.

The stiffness of the Aida does not really suit a drawstring. It won't tighten more than in the photo. It is a good, strong bag, and will, I'm sure, find it's purpose in life and spread cheer. I'm happy to have created it.