Two little spring hares

In Belgium, Easter isn't just about chocolate, it's another opportunity for children to get gifts, along with birthdays, Saint Nicholas and Christmas. This has led my hubby to declare that Belgian children are obviously spoilt. So maybe they are... But who am I to stop them?

In keeping with tradition, I wanted to get a little something for my baby girl, if only to mark her very first Easter. But I wanted it to mean something so I decided to make her a gift. 

Easter for us pagans is known as Ostara or Eostre and it celebrates the goddess by the same name. Her symbols were the egg (a fertility symbol) and a hare (as a sign of spring to come) - chocolate eggs and Easter bunnies anyone? So a bunny, or a hare, made perfect sense and I knew I had a pattern in a book I was given during pregnancy: The Home Sewn Nursery.

I got a little ambitious and decided to make two bunnies, a he and a she. That, with a babe in arms, was a bad move! I had to enlist the help of hubby so the bunnies would be finished for Easter and even with the two of us, we were still sewing past midnight to have them ready by morning. To make matters worse, the pattern is unnecessarily complicated in parts and I ended up having to do a lot more hand sewing than I'd planned. 

I used some natural linen for the head and limbs, Tilda fat quarters from my stash for the body and used Sevenberry scraps from my craft room cushions for the details. I couldn't find the right size and colour toy eyes in the sewing shop so I used black buttons for the eyes. 

When we were finished, we decided they both looked very girly so meet Peony and Rosie the little spring hares.

Peony

Rosie

I can't tell whether Nimue liked her gift though she did have a taste of Rosie when she tried to shove her in her mouth earlier. There will be a time when gifts made by mum and dad will be the most amazing thing ever and then there will be a time when handmade stuff just isn't cool. And then in later life, there will come a time when, if they have been kept with care, this kind of keepsake will be treasured immensely. I hope these two little hares will one day be just that.