For my littlest friend

My little niece Sofia turned One year old yesterday!

I knitted a blanket for her arrival into this world, and for this big milestone I wanted to make her something fun, educational, and most importantly, chewy! After playing around with a couple of prototypes I eventually came up an idea to make her building blocks.  Each block spells her name, so she can stack them any way she wishes to spell her name.

There are some special fabrics – the buzzy bee fabric seen here on the far left was a piece that my mother sent to me in a care parcel.

The spotty fabric on the far right of this photo is the same fabric that I used to make Mum’s apron. And the A on that piece is the wool fabric that Dad’s blanket was made from.

This cow fabric is from an old pillowcase of mine. I managed to cover up the text with an O that I blanket stitched on over the words.

The bottom of the photo has a little kiwi on the fabric, another of the fabrics that Mum sent to me.

This S took so long to stitch, I love the way it came out, it feels so great. I sewed it just imagining tiny fingers playing with the sliky stitching.

This fabric was leftover from the clutch that I made for my sister Karen’s birthday.  The tiny cherries came from a raid of mum’s stash earlier this year.

This monkey came from mum’s collection of iron on transfers.  I had to unpick some stitching around the edges, so at one point it was on either mine or one of my siblings clothing.  I love to think that he’s going to the next generation of our family, even if the tree does seem slightly too small for him to be hanging in!

Happy birthday Sofia!  I hope you have fun playing with these.