Finished Blocks

Here are Bean's toy blocks! I am showing mostly one side of each block here, for obvious reasons, but the rest of the blocks are a riot of patterns and colors. It all somehow works in an it's-all-from-my-stash-so-it-should-work-out kind of way.
The pattern was very easy to follow, including the directions on how to sew the actual cubes together. I read and reread the directions before starting (yes there is a little halo over my crafty head) but it didn't make sense until I actually did it. I still can't figure out exactly how it all happened to work out, but I think that's mostly because of the limited brain cell reserves I have from not having had a full night's sleep in 4.5 months. The only steps I added to the instructions was to measure and mark in 1/2 inch on each side that I sewed up so that I knew where to start and end my stitching. This meant that on each of the four sides that I sewed together I just marked one side of each piece. When I sewed up the top and bottom ends of each cube, I marked in 1/2 inch on each side of the end pieces (since I was sewing all the way round and needed to know where I was going). It all worked out quite well and I'm currently working on sewing up the bag that goes along with the project (just waiting on an order for fusible interfacing to come in...I had to actually purchase something!). I have the pieces cut and I've made a big freezer paper stencil "S" on one piece so that there is never a question of exactly whose blocks these are!

In other news, I'm on such a freezer paper stencil kick that I think I'm going to stencil up some of the plain onesies that Stella has outgrown for a craft fair I'm doing in December. I think I want to create some scherenschnitte-inspired designs, mostly because I think they would be really fun to cut out. Also because scherenschnitte is such a crazy fun word. Something like this or this (greatly reduced in complexity). And I just discovered the work of Helen Musselwhite, not that it could be translated in 2-D but just because it's so dang amazing, check her out here.