Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching. Card Nirvana has a great Valentine’s day card and a set of super cute kids valentine cards FREE to download at cardnirvana.com. The best thing is that they are so easy to use, just download, customize and print!
Can you tell I love valentine’s day?? I’m really excited because tomorrow I’m going to post some valentine’s projects! So check back in tomorrow.
This week’s featured craft blog is Princess LasertronI found the fabulous princess on theTwo Peas in a Bucket forums, her amazing crafts have just been recently featured in Brides Local Magazine’s Check them out if you live in one of these areas: Maryland/DC, New York, New Jersey, Boston, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Houston, Florida, Northern California, Southern California, Colorado, and Michigan.
Princess Lasertron makes the most beautiful projects with buttons that I’ve ever seen. On her blog you will see beautiful button-embellished bouquets such as these:
All Button Bouquet
As you can see, PL is very very busy and she really loves buttons! The best part about her work is that it will last a lot longer than real flowers!
So if you have a few minutes check out her blog www.princesslasertron.com , I’m sure you’ll be inspired, I know I was!
As I was cutting out squares for my pincushion, I realizes that I would be making a cute stuffed cube. And so I thought it would be really cool to make a “soft ABC baby block”. I wanted to make it slightly smaller and without the raw edges showing. So It was a bit of a different process. Here are the steps I took…
Cut 6 3″x3″ squares. I recommend wool.
Next you’ll want to embroider letters on the pieces. There are a few choices for embroidery. An embroidery machine (which I used), embroidering by hand, and some sort of iron on transfer.
Since I had already cut out my squares, they were too small to fit in the embroidery hoop. So I stretched some thin cotton and pinned them in the center of the hoop
square pinned to cotton in embroidery hoop
Then I just set the embroidery to do one letter, in the middle of the field as big as I could — which was 40 mm. I would have loved to do them bigger, but I only have the stock designs that came with the machine.
embroidering the "A"
After the “A” was all embroidered, I trimmed the cotton backing that it was attached to. I just trimmed fairly close to the letter, It doesnt have to look perfect because it will be hidden.
backside of the now-embroidered square
I went through the same steps as my first project. Sewing 4 squares side-by side, then to each other, followed by attaching the top and bottom:
4 sewn side-by side. This would be extra cute if it spelled baby.
sewn into an "open cube"
Now you’ll notice that I have the wrong side facing out. On this cube, different from the pincushion, I want to hide all the raw edges. So I’m sewing the whole square inside out and then reversing for the final soft block. You could do it with the edges showing like yesterday — it saves a bit of hand stitching in the end.
sewing on the top square
the bottom square is sewn on 3 sides waiting to be turned inside out & stuffed
Once you have sewn the bottom square on three sides, you will need to turn your cube inside out. As you turn it inside out, you will have to push the corners out as much as you can so it does not look sloppy. Then go ahead and stuff it really really full! You’ll need some thread and a needle to finish the cube up nice and clean.
Once you have your needle threaded. You’ll need to fold the raw edges into the cube and start stitching. You can pin them along the way, but this was such a small edge that I just held it in place as I stitched. I used a “baseball” stitch to get a smooth corner. That basically means that I sewed from the outside of one square to the inside of the stitch and then sewed from the outside of the opposite square again to the inside of the stitch. This makes a pattern similar to a baseball stitch.
the completed stitched side
And there you have it! My completed Soft ABC baby block next to my cute pin cushion! I think the baby block would be so cute as a set – you could do one with numbers and one with pictures and give them at a baby shower. Such a sweet handmade gift!
