Blocks - Foam Part 4

Cutting cake circles out of rectangular pieces of foam leaves

little wasted corners. So here's project #4 - what to do with

the odd-shaped leftover bits..... well, what I did with mine,

at any rate. I cut cubes from them

and made baby blocks.

Bonus: I got to use up all the sweet, plain, mild-

colored ginghams and terrycloth scraps

and some of the funkier pieces in the remnant box

plus the precious, for-special-occasions-only Very Good

Wool Felt (except the purple dress applique is fleece

because I didn't have purple felt).

I've always felt that if I ever made a quilt, I'd use a lot of

white in it and maybe only one or two other colors. Since

these blocks are a bit like a 3D quilt, I used a lot of

white and gave each block a color scheme.

Several years ago when I made the sofa, I made the leftover

bits into blocks, too. I was into ribbon-tag baby toys then,

and with just the one child and all the time in the world,

the prototype blocks had ribbon tags

applique

and some ric-rac craziness.

Some notes about making these blocks:

1. The bigger they are, the more stable they tend to be when stacking. The 3" ones are the best.
   
2. Like with the cake, I did not consider stuffing them with polyfill because I wanted them to be able to stack well (and not frustrate the poor children trying to practice this developmental skill).
   
3. I've put bells in the middle of some of them, but the density of the foam does muffle the jingle. The bells work better in blocks stuffed with airy polyfill.
   
4. To sew the fabric cases, I cut the foam cube first, then measured one face and added quarter-inch seam allowances all round. So the 3" cube would need fabric squares of 3.5".
   
5. There are many ways of putting the fabric squares together but the method that was least stressful for me was
   

• to sew four squares in a row, then join the short edges of the first and last square, to make a sort of cylinder
  
• then attach the top square, sewing around all four sides
  
• then attach the bottom square, sewing around 3 sides and leaving the fourth open.
  
• Snip the corners, turn right side out and insert foam cube
  
• and ladder-stitch the opening closed.
  

I found that this method allowed the corners to meet nicely.

Bit of risky self-disclosure: for a brief and dangerously 

silly moment, I also thought of sewing circles onto 

them and turning them into giant dice. 

Fortunately, the moment passed.