New Creations

I recently went on a shopping spree to buy some materials for my new creations. I wrote a list of things I could make, got excited and hit the shops! The first thing that I have tried to tackle is the soft toy, baby block. I decided to have a go at making one for my nephew, Elijah, last year as a Christmas present. So I found a local upholstery place and

went in to enquire.

I wanted just a couple of cubes to start with, around 10cm squared. The guy in the shop very generously gave me two for free as a tester. So I set to work to make the personalized toy. Each side was to have a letter of his name and a different fabric. I made a few mistakes, and it was definitely a trial and error process. Eventually I came up with a fool proof system that would work every time, made the pattern piece to go with it and now, almost a year on, I have finally got round to making some more.

Unfortunately the shop I got the foam from last time, has gone. However, in an effort to continue to support local businesses, I have discovered another upholstery shop nearby, called B O'Hara Upholstery and have recently managed to buy 20 cubes of foam from them.

Great service there, as it is an unusual request, and I will hopefully be using them more often if my efforts pay off.

After buying a LOT of felt, I have several ideas for 'felt projects', as it is such an easy material to work with. The soft toy was one idea that I wanted to try with the felt. In the batch that I bought from local sewing shop, Superior Sewing, there were some smaller squares. These squares worked perfectly for the cubes, when quartered they had 1/2 cm seam allowance, which was just enough to work with. So with two squares of 6 different colours, I have made 8 blocks as you can see in the photo below. They are currently plain, but with the potential to be customised to have letters, numbers or pictures on them. I will post some more photos when I have some examples.