Baby blocks with abc's

[rosebud3]

There is a young lady at work who is expecting her second child. I made her a crib size quilt for her first baby using the tumbling baby blocks. She asked me if I would make another one for her new baby, except put ABC's on the blocks. I know I can do this, but was wondering...would it be better to embroider, applique, or just quilt in the ABC's? Any suggestions?

[live2quilttwo]

How big are the blocks the letters will be on? If they are large, I would applique using Eleanor's fusable interfacing technique. If they are smaller, machine applique maybe. Just a guess.
Ruth

[rosebud3]

The diamonds used for the blocks are 4 1/2" cut (4" sewn). It takes 3 diamonds sewn together to form the tumbling baby block. Each of the 3 diamonds would have a letter of the alphabet in it, so the letter size would be about 2" tall.

[ctherrie]

Embroidery would be the easy way for me, and I am all about easy, I guess I would choose what you feel most comfortable with. I think you should only put letters on the two sides of the tumbling block and not the top as it would throw off the 3D effect. I would try testing some alphabet letters on some scrap fabric to see how they turn out.

[rosebud3]

The more I think about how to do this, I've eliminated applique. I will do a couple scrap blocks to see if I like embroidery or just quilted in better. I got to go shopping for fabric Thursday and Friday (my days off). There were some super sales! One shop had 2 tables of clearance fabric at $2.00 a yard and 20% off regular fabric. The other shop had some clearance fabrics at $4.00 a yard. All of it was normally $8.99 to $12.00 a yard. Any way I was thinking(not a good thing for me sometimes), if I quilt the letters in, use other primary colors than the color of the fabric and it will stand out. If I embroider them on, I will use embroidery floss in primary colors to make them.

ctherrie...actually doing the letters in each of the 3 blocks enhances the 3-d effect if you use set blocks and don't put anything in the set block.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I'll keep you posted as to my progress.

[rosebud3]

Okay, I made up my mind. The ABC's will be quilted in the blocks. I'll use contrasting primary colors of thread to do the quilting. I'll start cutting out the diamonds in the morning before I have to leave for work.