Tuesday Tutorial...Yummm, Carrots

As promised, I am going to show you how to make these easy, peasy, lemon-squeezy carrots. 

Now, I will tell you how I made them, but feel free to alter them to your own liking.  First I cut out a carrot shape.  This is just free-handed, and my pattern is approximately 5 1/2" long and is about 2 1/2" wide at the wide end.  Trace it onto cardstock, or even better, laminate.  Trace onto orange fabric.  I had this bright orange cotton remnant (have I told you how much I love remnants???) and traced as many as would comfortably fit on the swatch.  Trace onto the wrong side of fabric, doubled with right sides together (RST).  Don't cut apart.  Just start sewing on your traced lines.  When you have done as many as you want, cut out, of course cutting outside the sewing lines.

Now for the carrot tops:  Find a piece of green fabric, a tightly woven cotton works best.  I cut a piece 8" long by 5" deep.  Then cut slits(see pic below) about a quarter of an inch apart.  You can do this with a rotary cutter if you want.  If you are doing severl tops, you can stack them and fringe several at the same time.  Be sure to leave 1-1 1/2" at one end unfringed.

Roll the unfringed end with the printed side of your fabric facing the outside.

Stuff your carrot.  The way I did it was I stufffed the narrow end with fiber fill, added some weighted pellets infused with lavender, then finished up the wider end of the carrot with fiberfill.  Make sure that it is firmly stuffed and turn the end of the raw edges and run a gather stitch (this is done by hand)  As you pull the gathering thread, insert the rolled edge of the carrot top.  Hand stitch to secure. 

Thats all there is to it!  These carrots would be a perfect addition to an Easter basket, if you use scent, you can use as a sachet, or simply add some eggs and you have a great centerpiece.