Soft Baby Block

Our cousin has a daughter a little over a year older than Lillian and they have been nice enough to give us a lot of clothes for Lillian.  I decided that I wanted to do something for them other than just a thank you card.  So I decided to make a few things for the kids.

My first project was a soft baby block for their six month old son.  It was kind of fun to finally pick out boy fabric.  I used the cloth blocks tutorial from Make It and Love It.

This was a super fast project to make. I guess it did take a little while to cut out six squares but once that was done it took no time.  For me it seems to be easier to cut larger pieces of fabric than a bunch of smaller pieces.

I used quilter’s cotton for four of the sides and then the other two are flannel. I wanted a slight texture difference but wasn’t sure if attaching different fabrics would be an issue.  The flannel was not an issue, at least not while sewing (hopefully not while playing either).

There are other ways to make a cube but this way seemed to be the easiest.  I haven’t tried other ways so I can’t say that for sure.  For example, you could sew all six pieces together in a “T” shape like in this tutorial.

Cutting out the notches helps the pieces to lay better when sewing them to the main part of the cube.  The two pieces below are my flannel pieces.

I did have to learn how to do a ladder stitch before I could finish the block.  Here is a great PDF tutorial but it was a little easier for me to learn from a video so I recommend watching this one.

The hardest part of the project was probably the ladder stitch.  I didn’t sew close enough together at first so I actually had to go over it again.  It’s still not perfect but it wasn’t too bad.

Overall, I think this would be a great beginner project.  Especially to learn how to ladder stitch and just to practice sewing in a straight line with a 1/4 inch seam allowance.