My Little Hen

egg colors

I found this color chart floating around from 2006. I think it a Martha Stewart original.

One thing I like about Easter is the egg dyeing. Easter bunny or not, it's a spring ritual and a perfect way to get the family creative juices sparked. 

Here's another of my favorite easter projects from Quince and Quire. Really very cute and on my to-do list.

Lastly, this old photo of my brothers and I on Easter Sunday. I think my brothers have such cool hair cuts. 

How about you? Are you getting geared up for Easter? My friend Marie-Helene asked me what I'm making for Easter dinner. More on that another time. We had lots of ideas.

easter eggs

Apartment Therapy included me in their round up of easter egg decorating.
It's always great when they link to my blog. Here's a link to my natural egg dyeing.

Popular easter posts from My Little Hen

More Egg Beauty

Egg Beauty

Easter Colors

Egg Carton Easter Baskets (guest post on Simple Kids)

Green

We move from red to green in the holiday mode thanks to the crafts department at Martha Stewart. It is still winter but one can start the plan for spring.
Gardens, flowerboxes, fresh rooms (yes open the windows), trips. And you?

Sewing Party

Photos from the sewing party this weekend. Six girls, ages 5-6. We worked on the tooth fairy pillow project and all sewers successfully completed their project (with help from me and super helper Nora,  who learned to sew as a girl in her Waldorf school).

Each girl was given a sewing kit with their name on it. Inside they had the basics; needles, threads, pins, buttons, scissors, and measuring tape (all from a craft store). The girls selected their fabric from Purl Soho's handy precut packet of wool felt, and each choose a color of thread. Picking the colors was a big deal so provide a range of felt if you ever do this at home.

The girls followed a pre-cut wax paper template that I drew and outlined their fabric with tailors chalk.  Perfection wasn't the aim but general accuracy with the given materials was encouraged. After the fabric was cut, the girls tried to cut a heart shape. Some girls wanted to use my heart template, others made their own. Once all fabric and the heart shapes were cut, we threaded needles and began to practice the up and down (running) stitch on scrap fabric. 

Then they were ready to sew.

  

This young sewer couldn't stop and made another pillow all on her own, even though her friends ran outside to play. Very impressive!

Whenever I work with younger kids I am always so surprised at the staying power of a sewing project. We spent over 2 hours on the project. Yes, this age group needs supervision every step of the way but their comments and wonder at making something themselves is worth the work. So sweet!

Spring weekends are for ...

Preparing hand sewing projects from Homemade Fun for my kids classes at Purl Soho. Tweet and facebook please, through Purl's website. The Purl folks are a very special group of crafters. Try their reasonably priced classes.

 
So, I'm working out the details of this little project. I'm thinking of putting a strip of masking tape along the edge to help the kids follow the line for stitching. With this cream colored felt a pencil line won't work. Any suggestions? 

 
We also made these Homemade Fun popovers for breakfast. I love seeing towel on the line. Summer is coming along!!

  Isn't this a beauty?

Of course, loving the lilacs...and this sweet embroidery  HouseWren Studios.

beet prints & butterfly sticks & fresh flower cards

Hey, I'm thrilled that Craftzine mentioned my beet print cards!   Thanks alot! They are easy to make and make cool and richly textured patterns....Try it on paper, envelopes, white pillowcases (use the old and worn one kids not the new ones).

For a few other Mother's Day card ideas from MY LITTLE HEN follow my links to Dandelion Paint Brushes, where it all began.
Cute, simple and homemade are good things. Have fun and get your family printing and painting with flowers, beets, and other natural products from mother nature herself.

Dandelion Paint Brushes

Clover Paint Brushes

 After the panting kids can make Butterfly Sticks to charm mom. 

or make a Dandelion Paint Brush card and add in a fresh blossom. Mom can press these between newsprint and dry the flower card as a keepsake.

more egg beauty

 Another beauty from the archive (I'm sorry but I'm in review mode) that was featured on RENEST and then picked up by life hacker.com producing a record 50,000 visits per day to MY LITTLE HEN. That was exciting! There were a number of reasons for the lifehacker hits, one of which was a commenter said I was insane to use daffodil petals as a dye because it is toxic. I guess that caused quite a stir. BTW the bulbs are toxic not the petals. But the way I see it, fingernail polish is toxic so what was all the excitement about over the lovely daffodil petals?

There they are waiting to be "brewed".

 

I think I'll do more experimenting with natural dyes this year using Crafting Fun. It's more fun than using the dye tabs. On the other hand, tab dyes produce some bright colors that are hard to resist.

For example:

 

Egg Beauty

This was from last year. It's too pretty to let sit in the archives. 

simple sewing

Above is a page from Crafting Fun featuring the mother of all simple stitches, the up and down stitch. With this, kids can sew anything together. I was struck how similar the little sewer from my last workshop looked like the little girl in the illustration above. Sweet. 

One of my great delights lately has been teaching young kids to hand sew. I am getting more calls to teach workshops, friends want to create "sewing bees" for their kids, there are more plans for classes at Purl. This weekend, I'm working on a few new sewing projects to teach the kids from Crafting Fun and Homemade Fun.

Feel free to click on the sewing page from Crafting Fun and print out directions for your child to practice.

Kids Hand-Sewing Workshop

 The Valentine's Day Bunny workshop at Purl Soho was this weekend. The pictures will tell you the tale. Hardworking young crafters learned to thread a needle, trace and cut a bunny pattern from Homemade Fun, and practiced the blanket stitch while making their first soft toy.

This was clearly about the practice and not the final result. I'm very proud of these kids! It's an accomplishment to learn how to hand sew a toy in an afternoon workshop.

  

This bunny has a pocket and heart note that says "i heart u". 

The kids said they would like to make the bird ornament next! 

And I said ok.