embroidered blocks
I
nspired by baby’s soft building blocks, these embroidered ones are a fun way to make your embroidery three-dimensional! They’ll make a great gift for a baby, but I think they look wonderful as a decoration too. Choose a fabric that will be easy to embroider on, such as linen or Osnaberg. Begin by drawing a row of six 2.5” squares directly onto your fabric using a pencil and a straight edge. You can use bits of fabric, lace, and ribbon to make more of a collage or stitch the entire design. Have fun making up designs. Draw the design onto the fabric first if you’re unsure about your freestyle stitching abilities.
Once you’ve completed all of your 6 squares, it’s time for assembly. With right sides together, stitch two squares along one side, using small even stitches and a .25” allowance. I handstitched mine but if you’re more comfortable machine stitching, try that instead. With their right sides facing inward, continue stitching squares along the edges, creating an inside-out cube. Be extra careful at corners and at the end of a thread, reinforcing your stitches. As you stitch the cube together, leave the two last adjoining sides unstitched. Very, very carefully turn the cube right side out using the opening.
by Amy Powers
To make the cube nice and square, fill it with a cube of 2” medium density upholstery foam. You can easily cut the foam with scissors. Just mark the cut with a pencil, squeeze the foam and cut. When you’re filling the embroidered block, just squeeze the foam cube to make it as small as you can to fit through the opening with the sides lined up as well as you can and release. Adjust as necessary. Then tuck and pin the seam together and sew it shut with a whipstitch. To finish them off, you can go back over the finished cube’s edges with decorative stitches like the blanket stitch, feather stitch, or whatever you’d like. Make at least three blocks...or more!
autumn 2010
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