ABC Blocks Story

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ABC Blocks Story

10/4/2015

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In all the excitement from finishing these Tapestry Crochet ABC Baby Blocks and sharing the patterns with you all, I completely forgot to tell you the story behind this design!

So without further ado, let me share it with you...

Let's start at the beginning...

It's October 2011. I had just finished working on a baby dress set for a friend of mine, and I was aching to make some baby toys just because I thought it would be fun (I'm in my early 20's - the need to have a baby instinct is raging. I know I am not planning to have one anytime soon, but I am sure you can all remember how it goes). Anyways, I was also thinking about how I wanted to keep practicing my newfound love for tapestry crochet that I had learned earlier that year.

That's when I came up for the idea to make baby blocks. I was going to use tapestry crochet to make them with letters, numbers, shapes, pictures, and the list went on and on...

So I opened Carol Ventura's Free Flat Graph (she has them available to download on her site home page, just scroll down to the bottom) with my paint program and started playing around to see how I could create the letters. Side Note: One of the great things about Carol's special tapestry crochet graph paper is that it perfectly depicts how the finished crochet product will look. This obviously makes it much easier to design something without having to test it out first. Once I finished creating the letters, I started working on numbers. After that, I even designed some shapes, animals and other fun things (I didn't include these in the block series, but I may work on them for next year). I was so excited with them, and I couldn't wait to get started!

I can't really remember at this time, why I didn't get started on crocheting them right way. It could have been I didn't have the right colours or enough colours - the original designs use like 12 different colours, or it may have been something else. At any rate, it would be almost 2 years before I actually picked up my hook to start crocheting the letters...

It's now May 2013. I have finally picked up my hooks and started to crochet some of the letters. I decided to stick to 3 colours rather than use so many.

My blog is brand new, and I had just discovered my love for creating crochet patterns. So, I would work on a new pattern for my blog or to sell, and somewhere in between, I would work on another square.

Fast-forward to October 2013. I shared my first WIP of the first 18 squares finished. In that update, I thought that I had finally gotten all the colours that I ran out of, but it turns out that the orange I had picked up was not the same colourway as the one I had been using. I was so disappointed that I didn't write down the number. This means I had to put the project on hold again...

As hard as I looked and searched, and no matter how many different craft stores I went to, I could not find the right orange. In fact, it took me over a year to find the right one! I finally found it in December 2014, when I was picking up some pink and purple for a friend's can cozy commission. As you can imagine, I grabbed the biggest skein I could get at that time.

I wanted to get started on them so badly, but I needed to finish the commission. Then, as I was working on the cozy, I had an idea for several other fun things I could make using the same pattern design. If I was going to get pictures of them with the cozy before giving it to my friend, I would have to work on them right away (which reminds me, I still have to share those projects with you).

It was around this time that my computer crashed (it refused to turn back on and took a 3 month long vacation). I was feeling a bit discouraged and uncertain if I would ever recover all my photos and pattern WIP / test. I didn't want to work on any of my pattern projects for a while and as much as I wanted to finish my baby blocks, I really needed a "me" project. I figured if my computer was going to take a vacation, so would I (I had been meaning to take one since the summer!). So, I grabbed one of the pretty purples I got in November and crocheted myself a top. Then, I took the other purple and crocheted a bible cover for my bible. My MIL loved mine one so much she asked if I could do one for her with a big cross on it. So I did (her's is still missing a zipper). *Yes, I know, I know... I still have to share these with you too. I just know you are going to love them so much and want the patterns for them. I don't want to keep you waiting for them like I have been doing with the Mermaids.

I just kept working on one simple project after another until I couldn't think what I could crochet without taxing my brain too much. That's when I remembered my ABC Blocks!

I kept saying to myself, "Yes, I can finally finish these!". *We are now in February 2015...

So, I work on them until I finish the remaining 18 squares I had left. Next, I take some pictures of all the squares together before turning them into blocks.

I finally got my old laptop working (note my computer is still on vacation), and that's when I share the finished squares with you all and officially come back from my vacation. I had missed you all so much!

That week, I worked on the video tutorials, typing up the patterns and getting it tested. Just as I was finishing with it all, my laptop dies! Now, when my computer crashed in December, I stayed mostly positive and looked at it as a blessing in disguise. However, now I was out 2 computers, no way was I going to be able to get a new one anytime soon. Plus, I still needed to share the patterns with you all. I was seriously freaking out! I wanted to cry, but at least this time I didn't loose my work because I had saved it to a cloud.

A few days later, hubby takes a look at my computer (not my laptop, laptop is still dead). He is somehow able to reset it, and Praise be to God my computer wakes up! Almost 3 months to the day, all my hard work from the last 2 years is restored and I can finally get right back into my work again. I breathe a huge sigh of relief that I can start publishing the block series. I started a few days later than I meant to, but I think it all worked out good in the end.

I am so very happy with how my blocks turned out. The colours are fun, the letters and numbers are perfect, they are just the right size, what's not to love? Yes, it took around 3.5 years from conception of the design to finish them and make a pattern too, but it was so worth it!

You can find all the letter / number squares and how to turn them in to square on this blog linked below (some parts have yet to be published), OR you can Purchase the PDF Version of the Whole Tapestry Crochet ABC Blocks Pattern Here...

Have you ever had a project that spanned many years to finish because you got distracted by another, ran out of yarn, or some other crazy thing happened? Share your story with me below...