Easter cards

I made some crochet cards at Christmas with removable stars but it seemed to me after I had got into making bookmarks that cards incorporating removable bookmarks would be even more worthwhile.

Now I am not really an Easter card sending person but where people have sent me cards in the past, I have felt the need to respond. So I decided that Easter cards incorporating cross bookmarks would be something I could make for this year as I only had a few to send.

Now one of the Easter cards I get is from people who are, as far as I know, not at all religious, so for them I made this card. Quite quick and simple because I wasn’t sure what to make and as time was running short (they live in the U.S.) I had to buckle down and produce something. 🙂

But I had already started on my cross bookmarks for my christian friends.

As with the eggs, I started by looking on Google for ones I liked and used that as a way in to some free patterns.

http://www.crochetnmore.com/bonniescrossbookmark.htm

http://craftpals.com/bible-crafts/cross-bookmark.shtml

I expect you can see their influence in what I chose to make in the end.

However both these patterns used dcs (UK trs) and when I started making them in my #20 cotton I felt that the stitches were too small and decided that I wanted to make the same shapes (reminiscent of the pineapple ‘shell over shell’) but using trs (UK dtrs).

So using the picture from the first link as a starting point I made this:-

As you can see, on my cross the arms are further up and there are less ‘shells’ as mine are longer.

I liked the idea of a contrasting edge, that I had adopted from other pictures I had seen, but overall I was not entirely happy with it as I felt the stitches were too loose and that made it too flimsy so I decided to try again with my #10 cotton.

I only have one ball of this so I abandoned the contrasing edging and produced this:-

This was much better (I had used the same size hook). I had also decided that a picot edge could look quite appealing and adapted the method of making picots from the ‘fan bookmark’ pattern.

The other pattern I had found had had a positive centre and so I made another cross this time starting from a central boss.

Finally I got out a smaller hook and made a cross similar to the first cross, though using the second pattern and a picot edge this time.

This was acceptable.

At first I hung the bookmarks on my Easter tree but it the meantime I went to ‘Paperchase’ and bought some folded card and matching envelopes as I had for Christmas.

I would have preferred a slightly less acid green but I bought three lots anyway, brought them home and printed a greeting inside.

Then all that was left was to attach the bookmarks to the front of the card, which I did in a similar way to those I made at Christmas but more simply.

Giving me three cards to send to people.

Realising that up to now I have not made any bookmarks for myself I made a cross bookmark using the second pattern with my pastel rainbow mix #20 cotton.

 

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