How to Make Fabric Letters

Want to learn how to make this unique gift of fabric letters?

Recently, I was invited to a baby shower and I made these fabric letters for baby as a gift. I always love to make something handmade to give to the new parents. Spelling out the word “baby” with the fabric.

I had made these previously for another friends baby shower also. For that one I spelled out the baby’s name.

Keep reading on to see how to see how I made them and more ideas of what to do with them.

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Greetings from my sewing room!

Getting started and what you will need.

There are only a few things you need to make these letters. I’m sure you already have all the supplies on hand. It’s a great way to use up some extra scraps of fabric you have left over from other projects.

I use this Brothers sewing machine. Find my sewing machine here.

Cotton quilters batting. This is used in the middle of the letter to make it plush and squishy to the touch.

Quilt batting that I used.

Left over fabric. I decided that for this project I wanted to use a mix of different fabrics instead of making the letters all one color. There is three different fabric I chose to mix it up.

Stencils, pins, scissors and something to mark the outline. At first, I was going to use a marker when I started. It ended up being to dark so I switched to a washable colored pencil. Also, a story about my stencils. They are actually my cookie cutters. You can also use larger stencils made out of paper to create bigger letters. Or if you have bigger cookie cutters that’s great too. It depends on what project you are making and what size you want them to be. More on that below.

My favorite scissors for sewing projects.

Cookie cutter stencils

Beginning the letter project. Trace and cut the stencil.

I took my cookie cutter stencil and measured how much fabric I would need for that letter. I am spelling out the word “baby” for this project so I need enough fabric for two ‘b’s’, one ‘a’ and one ‘y’. Make sure you double up the fabric because you need to have a piece for the front and the back of your letter.

I used my washable colored pencil to outline the stencil.

I recommend this washable quilting pencil.

Line up the stencil and start tracing away.

As you can see this is what it would look like after you use the washable pencil to trace the stencil on the fabric.

Getting the pieces together.

Here are the two pieces of fabric for the front and back. Make sure the right side is up on both sides. For this project you will not be turning any work in side out. All the sewing is done on the outside.

Get the batting ready by cutting a piece about the same size as your fabric squares. Cut a piece of batting for each letter.

Place the batting in between the two pieces of fabric.

You now have a quilt sandwich. This is the three layers all together. Hmm, sandwich. Now I’m hungry. 🙂

Pin your work

Now take your pins and pin all three layers together.

I like to use these pins.

Make sure to use enough pins so the fabric doesn’t move on you when you run it through the sewing machine. Do this for all the letters you made. Set them aside to get them ready to be sewn.

Sewing time

Get the first letter ready and place it in the sewing machine. You want to use a low speed when making these. It is a lot easier to follow all those curves and dips in the letters. Also, sew very carefully the holes in any of the letters. Such as the ‘b’ and the ‘a’.

Sew all the letters on the outline that you made with the pencil.

Cut

Now you can take the pins out and start cutting the fabric and trim any thread that is sticking out from the sewing machine.

Make a cut 1/4 inch away from the stitches you made with the sewing machine. Make sure to go slow around the round edges. It will make sure they have nice rounded edges. I love this look with the batting exposed threw the edge.

Don’t forget if any of the letters have holes in them to cut them out too. Repeat this until all the letters are cut out. Be careful here not to cut into any stitches.

This is the exposed edge I mentioned before. Looks cool, right?

Finished

Here they are all done being sewed and cut out. Before I give them away as a gift I always wash them and iron them. The next picture shows them after they were washed.

Other uses for fabric letters.

Some other things that are great to use this fabric letters for are:

Alphabet. Using the soft fabric letters as an alphabet tool with young children. It helps them learn their letters and is great sensory tool too to see and feel them.
Garland. Making a letter garland is another idea. It gives visual texture to your environment. You can string the words “happy birthday” or “first birthday”.
Childs name. As in my case, I made the word “baby” for the new parents. But you also make the child’s name so it can be displayed in pictures or decoration in their room.

For more visual learners I made a step by step YouTube video tutorial.