Nancy Drew's mystery block

Thank you for stopping by my blog!  I've never done a blog hop before, but I was inspired by the fabric.  In fact, I've had the idea for this block rattling around in the back of my head for maybe ten years.  It was just waiting for the right fabric to bring the idea to life.

The "block" is really a series of blocks.  Foam blocks, to be exact.  Eight of them.  Bought a piece of foam at Joann's, and had the shop teacher at the high school cut them down to perfect cubes (thanks, Kent!)  Cubes were 2" on each side.



I covered one single block in fabric, just to check how much ease was needed, and how big of an opening I would need to stuff the foam back inside after sewing the cube on the sewing machine.

The prototype block: inside surfaces

Bad news. I felt, after stitching a single block, that the overall project was going to need to be mostly hand stitched.  And I'm not much of one for hand sewing.

Made a prototype of the interlocking blocks out of cheery scrap fabrics in my stash.  Discovered a couple errors in my calculations and was thankful that I had not made such errors from a limited supply of Nancy Drew fabric.




So I ordered a Nancy Drew charm pack from the closest store to me.  Never have used a charm pack before.  Didn't quite know what to expect, and really really wanted to get an idea of the scale of the prints: would the pictures show up on 2" blocks?  Even the silhouettes?

Ok, enough stalling - time to unveil my creative baby.  Here it is, seen in its closed position.

There are six sides to a cube.  Lots of opportunity to showcase the delightful variety of Nancy Drew prints.

Top - Sides - Bottom of block

Did I mention it moves?

That's the beauty of this design.  The fact that the cube opens up to reveal three interior scenes.  And one of the scenes is scrambled when you first see it - but unscrambles when turned a different direction.  Oh, the possibilities!

I know you can't see the interior scenes well from the video, so here they are.  Had to do some creative fussy-cutting to use the charm squares.

The silhouettes gave me the most trouble.  Wanted to use the blue-on-white, but of course those pieces didn't showcase Nancy the way I would have liked.

(Oy, such a perfectionist I am.  It really gets in the way sometimes.)

I want to outline the figures here so they show up better.  Maybe after I finish the actual hand stitching of the blocks (note the pins - drat).

Second interior scene - don't you love this fabric?

And my favorite interior scene: the "message" from The Secret in the Old Attic.  It gets scrambled and then unscrambled as the block is manipulated.  This idea was the whole inspiration for signing up for this blog hop.

Thanks to Madame Samm and Carol for leading and cheering on this hop!

Have you visited everyone else?  What is your favorite project?

Friday, March 15, 2013 

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Why-Knot-Kwilt

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Julia P. at That Other Blog

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Les passions de Cliodana

That’s Sew Julie (moved from 3/8)

Sew We Quilt