Do you fill a basket with candy and small gifts for your children on Pascha morning? If you’ve made an embroidered cover for the Pascha basket that you take to church, your children might like to try their hand at basket covers for their baskets at home. Older children might want to try their hand at embroidery with Peter’s Basket Cover, a free pattern based on the illustrations in Catherine’s Pascha. Younger children can use the instructions below to make a simple cover using craft supplies you may already have on hand. The basket covers can be decorated with traditional designs. But since they’ll be used at home, there’s no reason to object if a child wants to decorate the basket cover with images from their favorite books or TV shows.
Gather your supplies and prepare the workspace
For each basket cover, you need a piece of white cloth large enough to cover your child’s basket. You can cut the fabric from a worn-out sheet or pillow case, or you can buy plain white kitchen towels at your local craft store.
To decorate the cover, you’ll need ribbon, lace, and rick-rack, along with scissors and craft glue or fabric glue. Fabric paint will allow for more intricate designs. If your child wants to embroider part or all of the design, you’ll also need embroidery floss.
Use an old sheet or tablecloth to protect the work surface from paint and glue. If you use newspaper instead, it might get black smudges on the white cloth.
Decorate the basket covers
There’s no right or wrong way to work on the basket cover. Your child can cut lengths of ribbon and lace to the right length and then glue them on, or glue them on first and then cut.
Use fabric paint to add squiggles and dots, flowers, eggs, or other designs.
Some children may want to embroider part of their design.
The completed Pascha basket cover might look like a traditional rushnyk. Or it might be covered in hearts and flowers and dinosaurs.
The Pascha basket covers are as beautiful and unique as the children who make them.
All photos on this page are by Melinda Wolf Brown.
Read More
Pascha baskets and Pascha basket covers: The history and tradition of Pascha baskets and Pascha basket covers.
Celebrating Pascha: The Queen and Lady of Days: Orthodox Christians can be a little bit over-the-top when it comes to celebrating Pascha.
17 ways to use Catherine’s Pascha: If you’re looking for more crafts, projects, and activities to extend the book, look here!
Buy the Book: Catherine’s Pascha
FINALIST IN THE 2015 USA BEST BOOK AWARDS
Catherine doesn’t like vegetables. She doesn’t like naps, and she doesn’t like it when her mom combs her hair. She loves hot dogs, chocolate cake, and her best friend, Elizabeth. Most of all, she loves Pascha! Pascha, the Orthodox Christian Easter, is celebrated in the middle of the night, with processions and candles and bells and singing. And Catherine insists that she’s not a bit sleepy.
Celebrate the joy of Pascha through the magic of a book: Catherine’s Pascha. Available on Amazon, Bookshop.org, and my webstore.
