These soft fabric baby blocks make a wonderful gift for a baby shower or for a young child! The large fabric blocks are easy for young hands to hold. And the Poly-Fil stuffing makes them soft and squishy.
I’ve got a tutorial for you below.
You can make these baby blocks from scraps in your stash, though I prefer to use charm squares to make them. The size of these blocks make them perfect for using charm squares.
At 5” square, charm squares will make a finished soft fabric baby block that is 4.5” square. Plus you can get a nice variety of coordinating prints from a single charm pack.
Each fabric block takes 6 charm squares. Depending on how many squares are in your charm square pack, you should have enough from one pack to make 6 soft fabric baby blocks.
If you don’t have a pack of charm squares you want to use, don’t worry. These blocks are also super adorable made from scraps. You could also get creative and include some squares made from Minky or vinyl to give baby a variety of textures in their blocks.
Fabric baby blocks are surprisingly easy to make. They use only straight seams, and they’re fairly straightforward to put together. You just need to be careful with your seam allowance for them to come out nice and neat.
Supplies (to make one fabric block):
6 charm squares (or 5” squares of quilting cotton)
6 4.5” squares of fusible fleece (optional)
Poly-fil stuffing
All seam allowances are 1/4″. RST = right sides together.
Prep
Follow manufacturer’s instructions to fuse the fleece to the backs of each of the fabric squares.
Arrange your fabric squares like below. It may take some auditioning and rearranging to get the colors/prints lined up how you like.
An easy way to think of the arrangement is that the squares in the horizontal line will be the sides, and the squares above and below will be top/bottom.
It’s a good idea to take a photo of your arrangement so you can easily refer back to it while you’re sewing the pieces together.
How to Sew a Soft Fabric Baby Block
Take the first two pieces in the horizontal line and sew them together down one side, RST and with ¼” seam allowance AND starting/stopping your seam ¼” from the ends. Be sure to backstitch at the beginning and end of this seam.
Accuracy with the ¼” from the ends is super important because that’s where the corners of your block will meet up. A quarter-inch patchwork presser foot is especially helpful for this, but if you don’t have one you can just use an erasable fabric marking pen to mark ¼” from the ends before you sew this seam.
Continue sewing together all of the squares in the same manner.
Now, sew the edges of the top/bottom pieces to the side pieces, as shown, RST and starting/stopping ¼” from the ends. You can really start seeing the block come together now!
Be careful when you’re sewing that you’re not accidentally sewing through the seam allowances at the beginning and ending of your seams. I usually finger press the seam allowances back before I start sewing.
As the block starts becoming more 3-D and not just a flat piece, it’s easy for the fabric to slip while you’re sewing. I use a couple of pins to keep everything lined up while I sew.
Now you’ve got something that looks like a fabric box. Now is a good time to check all of the corners you’ve sewn. Make sure there are no holes in the corners. (Holes can happen when your seams fall just a little short of ¼” from the ends.) If there are holes, they’re easy to fix by just extending one of the corner seams a little longer to close the gap.
Sew that last square around the top of your box, the same way you did before starting and stopping ¼” from the ends. Leave about 2” open on one of the seams to create a turning hole.
Turn the fabric block right side out through the turning hole.
Stuff with Poly-Fil stuffing, then hand sew the turning hole closed using a ladder stitch.
Your soft fabric baby block is finished!
If you love these darling fabric baby blocks, you will love Anne’s other kid-friendly projects as well!
Baby Girl Bib and Skirt Set Sewing Tutorial
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