Friday, September 16, 2011

Crusts

'I always ate my piece of bread-and-butter up straight away like a good girl, but my naughty little sister didn't. She used to bend her piece in half and nibble out the middle soft part and leave the crust on her plate.' ~ from My Naughty Little Sister and Bad Harry by Dorothy Edwards

My kids don't eat crusts either and as we have no hens of our own we were throwing them all out into the garden for the birds. I think we have been single handedly responsible for feeding the bird population of Southern Ireland.

Last week Benny and I devised a plan for our crusts.
A crusts bag.
I try and do little projects with Benny as often as possible and there were plenty of things he could do to help make this.

First he designed the duck picture on the front and chose one of our old (and horribly stained dish towels).



We folded the top over and machined it to make a wee tunnel for a ribbon to be threaded through.



He chose a fabric (green of course) and we transfered his picture onto the fabric by loosely drawing the shape of a duck on the wrong side.


He practiced cutting out using the snippy scissors.


I don't think he did too badly at all :-)


I tidied up the edges using the pinking shears (to save from having to hem it).
We machined the duck onto one half of the tea towel, then added a felt beak and a button eye.


Benny loves helping to sew on buttons.


We folded the tea towel in half (with the duck on the inside) and machined around the side and bottom edges to make a bag. We threaded a ribbon through the top that will draw the top closed
to keep the crusts in.


To finish it off we drew on the legs and I wrote 'crusts' with fabric pen.

Our crusts bag hangs in the kitchen and all our crusts go into it.



Wow that is very full of crusts!



The ducks at our local pond were delighted with the crusts.


I think this would make a lovely gift for a young child of 2 or 3. Obviously made with much nicer fabric and finished better. A little crusts bag and a copy of the Ugly Duckling or something. Will have to keep that one in mind.


What do you do with your crusts (apart from eating them)?

11 comments:

  1. what a lovely idea!!! and so simple even i could sew that lol.... Thanks for the inspiration xx

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  2. Thats a great idea:) Our few left over crusts usually go to our rats Pippin and Charlie and our mice (buttercup, ivy, blossom, clover and clara).They have this way of staring you down till you share!

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  3. Oh Laura, what a sweet story, and what a fabulous idea! I love this bag! We are crust eaters, but also there are times we don't eat 'em, and they go to the chickens, or compost.
    I plan to try and write you this weekend, dear friend! Love Mel

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  4. What a wonderful idea!! I feed the neighborhood birds as well, and I am always saving bits of bread, what a nice way to carry it. Great post!

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  5. Great idea! My boys don't eat crusts either. (I usually eat theirs - as my waist can attest)

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  6. What a good idea! We used to keep our crusts to feed the ducks and geese too, but they don't come very often to the little pond close to where we live, so we'd end up with mouldy bread most times. Thankfully my kids now eat their crusts, lol.

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  7. Thanks for popping over. This is genius!! xx

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  8. Hey Laura, you are a very clever mama, fab idea :)

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  9. thanks guys, I'd love to see your crusts bags if you make one, be sure to send me the link :-)

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  10. We eat our crusts but that is a adorable bag! I Love the rustic look of it and how it isn't
    "perfect" what ever that means lol. Great job mom and little guy!

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