Easter Project – Fun and Quick!

Are you still in need of a few handmade Easter things for decoration? Never fear, here is one easy, quick and cute little Easter quilt. You have time to make one or more! Super easy – in fact it’s going to take longer for me to write it out, than it is for you to make it!

 

 So, you’ll need:

(1) 12″ square each of blue linen, white backing, and batting (You can make this any size you like, but these were my dimensions.)

52″ of wide (about 1-1/2″) lace for outside edge (and another 28″ of the same lace for the bow)

18″ narrow lace

12″ narrow white ribbon (about 1/4″)

(1) 12″ stick, painted white

A good handful of white buttons, amd some white pearle cotton to sew them to the quilt.

And a little glue, any kind will do

Put it together:

Place your blue linen and white backing right sides together, add the batting to one side. It doesn’t matter which side. Pin around the outside, leaving an opening, so you can turn it right side out.

Sew a 1/4″ seam around the outside, starting and stopping at the purple marks (shown in the picture). Remove pins, and turn inside out. Push out corners, fold under and press opening edges.

Now, we don’t want to be bothered with hand-sewing that opening closed, so we’re not! Place the end of the wide lace in the middle of the opening as shown in the picture below. From now on, the opening will be at the bottom of the quilt.

So, we’re going to get fancy now, and miter the corners! Don’t be scared, it’s SO easy – you’ll wonder why you never did it before. Pin the lace to the quilt background as it’s shown in the picture above. Now, fold the lace back on itself, exactly! Leave about 1/8″ of blue showing. Use one of your see-through rulers with a 45-degree angle marking on it and line up that 45 degree line with the straight edge of the lace. Using a disappearing ink pen, mark that line.

Now, pin that line, right along the line, so that you can unfold the lace and do the next corner. As you go, pin the lace to the background so it doesn’t shift.

 

Once you’ve done each corner, take it to the sewing machine and sew those 45-degree lines. Remove pins and trim away excess lace.

Now, start the end of the lace again, where it was when you started marking corners. Pin. Match each lace corner to the background corner and pin not only the corners, but the lace in-between the corners. Sew along both edges. After the 4th corner, turn under the raw edge of the lace and stitch.

Draw an oval in the center. Use anything you like as a pattern for an oval, my oval was about 5″ x 4″ – some suggestions: The cocoa tin, a small jewelry box, the bottom of a cosmetic jar, or if you have a graphics program on your computer, draw out an oval and print it out! Draw around it with the disappearing ink pen. Then, because you never know how long that ink is going to last, sew the narrow lace around that line.

After I sewed on the narrow lace, I took my quilt and buttons, with my needle, white pearle cotton, small scissors out to the living room to watch the first baseball game of the season, because, my team (the St. Louis Cardinals) were playing and I wasn’t going to miss this! So, I sat and sewed on buttons, tying a knot in the front of each button, rather than the ‘usual’ way!

Once that was done, I took my narrow white ribbon, marked the halfway spot, and sewed it to the quilt as shown below.

Do this on both sides, place the stick along the top of the quilt and tie the ribbons around it. Place a dot of glue under the tied ribbons, and let it dry. The easiest way to let it dry is to hang it up and let the weight of the quilt hold the ribbons down. Just find a nail in the wall, and place the stick on it, in the center. It’ll stay. Tie a bow from the remaining wide lace and glue it underneath the button egg. This way all that starting and stopping business will be covered up.

And suddenly you’re done! See I told you it was easy! All these photo’s, if you click on them, they will get bigger if you want to see something closer. And yes, there are two pins in my lace bow, cause my glue isn’t dry yet.

Happy Easter!

Karen