Putting all of my eggs in one basket

The last couple of days I have really enjoyed just a bit of quiet time - peace and quiet to chill out completely and do exactly what I want to do. So I have spent much of this time sewing, watching more Cold Feet, lots of films and (slightly obsessively) crocheting eggs for my Easter basket.

I started off by sewing together the fabric pieces that I had cut for the wattle and comb

Turning these out the correct way and then lightly stuffing each piece before they would be ready to attach to the body of the chicken.

I had managed to get a piece of felt last weekend that my hubby (again to the rescue!) cut to the correct size and inserted into the bobbin race of my machine to keep it oiled. No problems with this again this weekend so I think that this has done the trick and fixed it. Thank you.

The wings were next to be completed. Again the two pieces of each wing were attached together and then turned out the correct way. These were also lightly stuffed and then the detail added for the wings. This comprised of sewing three lines into each wing to imply feathers.

The body itself in some ways wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had expected to sew together but I did have a few issues attaching the wattle to start with but this was mostly because I had misread the pattern and was therefor trying to attach this far higher up the face that it should have been.

After much swearing and unpicking, they were attached as they should have been.

The part that I thought was going to be the most difficult was attaching the bottom piece of the chicken onto the sides, especially when attaching the second side, but this seemed to work out fairly well. I think that this was something I had planned for before it became an issue and therefore it worked out about as well as I had planned.

After this, the rest of the project involved an awful lot more hand-sewing than I would have liked. I even managed to rope my hubby in to provide a little assistance earlier on when making the comb as I struggled with this on the sewing machine due to the points at the top of this. I did attach the wings myself using small stitches in the back of each one and a small beak.

The beak again, I had chosen to divert from the pattern to create. For this I had chosen a to cut two small tringles of fabric. I used a green section from he same fabric that I made the wings from. This had a chevron pattern on so I hoped that this would work to form accurately, the details of a beak. These two triangles were again sewn together by hand (too small and fiddly to do on the machine) and then stuffed.

I had at this point had enough of the hand-sewing so I didn't manage to finish the whole chicken yesterday. The beak and eyes were lift until today and then sewn on. Whilst attaching the beak I had to ensure that I folded the raw edges under so that these were not left on show. Quite a pretty face she has really I think

A fully completed chicken all ready to sit on her eggs

Any spare moment that I have had over the last couple of weeks seems to have been taken up by the making of eggs for her to sit on. Admittedly there hasn't been too much of that available during this time but I don't think I have come out with a bad number really.

Here they are in all of their different sizes

They were all made using the same pattern but just using different yarns and hook sizes.

The largest ones were made with 3 strands of double knit yarn all used together with a 10mm crochet hook. The next size were made using 3 strands of 4ply and a 8mm hook. The third largest eggs were made with 2 strands of double knit and a 6mm hook. Fourth is 2 strands of 4 ply with a 4.5mm hook and fifth is 1 strand of double knit with a standard 4mm hook. Finally, the tiniest eggs wee made with a single strand of 4ply with a 3mm hook. This is slightly smaller than would normally be used for 4ply but I wanted these ones in particular to be tightly crocheted so that no stuffing would be seen through the fine yarn.

My favourite of all of the eggs is this one I think. This was made using some left over multi-coloured 4ply sock yarn that I had just a small amount of leftover alongside some plain white.

These smallest ones were definitely the most fiddly to make but are very cute!

The eggs fill the basket quite nicely

And are all ready to be sat on by our lovely hen

I am really happy with the way that my decoration has turned out and am really looking forward to having a lovely day with friends tomorrow with our chicken, lots of eggs and a nice roast dinner to share too. Happy Easter everyone! I shall check in again in another couple of days to fill you in on the full celebrations.