Donation: Alphabet Blocks v3

I think alphabet blocks will always be a recurring project on this blog. But at least I make them different, and hopefully better, each time around.

Alphabet blocks v3

These blocks were for a charity. And they were a rush job, mainly due to my own procrastination. I literally finished, photographed, and mailed these blocks on the same day.

Main Info

• Time
• Crocheting: 12.5 hours
• Yarn: Lion Brand Yarns - Pound of Love
• Pink
• Pastel Green
• Pastel Blue
• Honeybee yellow
• Lavender
• Turquoise

"Pattern"

I put pattern in quotes because I had no pattern for this. I did not follow my old pattern for making blocks, this one was very straightforward. Crochet six squares 8x8 stitches, sew them together. This time around I did six instead of five and made the non-alphabet block sides numbers.

You'll also notice that I purposely used six different colors so each block had a different colored side. Unfortunately the pastels and the yellow make it really hard to see the white, might need to rethink on that one.

I did plan out how I would embroider the letters and numbers, but honestly didn't follow all of them that closely.

Sketch of how to embroider the block sides

Thoughts from the process

I need to rethink the number of stitches for the square. After these blocks, I am now less sure of the whole 8x8 stitch squares. Mainly because that means I give myself 7x7 "holes" to embroider the letters and numbers on. However there's the turning gap at the end of a row so it's more like 8x8. Below I've marked the holes I can use in a given row with circles:

The 8 or more like 6 holes I can embroider with.

At the same time a hole on each side should be left alone for the sake of having a nice margin. I also usually use those to sew the sides together. Those I marked in red.

This leaves me with a 6x6 grid to embroider letters and numbers, many of which can look obviously off center if I don't ignore the holes, like this Q and K.

 

To remedy it for some, I just stuck my needle through a stitch, liked I did with the Y, shown earlier.

I'm honestly not sure what the right solution is at this point. I've taken pictures of all the sides of these blocks for my records. The next time I need to make alphabet blocks I'll brainstorm on it. Maybe I need to also look into typography, to better understand letter shaping in general.

On the plus side I did figure out how I like sewing the corners together. Below is a corner of one of the blocks. When sewing the corner of three squares, I have a hole from each square for the stitch. Each hole get's two stitches, one stitch for each of the other squares. I think it gives a nice little finish.

How to sew corner of a block

I also had a nerdy computer science moment while trying to figure out the fewest number of times I'd have to cut and start at another corner when sewing on the edges. The answer is four separate starts and ends to sew a block together. I start by sewing all fours edges around one side, go down an edge to the opposite side and the do the same. Then I have three edges left to sew that all require cutting moving to a different corner. There's actually a mathematical graph traversal theorem to prove it!