I’ve had a lot of baby gifts to sew lately. That’s a very fun “problem” to have. The last few gifts have been quilts. So I thought I’d do something a little different this time, and try making a baby block.
At the moment, I need to clean my house and get myself ready to go out and spend time around adults. I’m currently wearing workout clothes, and project stuff is everywhere. So this is going to be short!
I wanted to embroider “A, B, C” on the blocks. But I didn’t want to take the time to print out the letters and trace them onto the fabric using the window-lightbox method. So I came up with a quick trick that worked pretty well for something this simple.
I went ahead and put my fabric square in a small embroidery hoop. Then I typed out the letter that I wanted on my computer (which is a font Matthew made). Then I stuck my embroidery hoop up carefully against the monitor, and traced it with a pen. Easy!
Sewing the three letters was pretty quick. I used a stem stitch, back stitch, and split stitch for variety.
To sew the block together, I put the pieces in a layout like this and sewed them into this shape:
Then, inside out, I folded up the panels that matched each other and sewed those together. You’ll notice I also tucked in different ribbons in each seam, to give the baby something easy to grab on to.
For the final side, I sewed in about an inch from each corner, and left a little over an inch in the middle. After I stuffed it full, I whip stitched it closed by hand. And, I forgot to sew a ribbon in there. Ugh! I did such a nice invisible whipstitch that I am afraid I might rip the fabric trying to take it apart. I may leave it, or I may rip that out and sew ribbon in before the baby shower. We’ll see.
I don’t think that this block is enough of a gift, so I’ll be making some more stuff. Not sure what yet, but I’ll be back to share it here. Now I’m off to clean up!
