Fabric Letters

by Alisa

My littlest niece headed to her first day of preschool this week. When we were talking about her going to school a few weeks ago she told me, "But I don't know my letters!". I assured her that they would teach her the alphabet and there was nothing to worry about. But she was clearly concerned, so when I saw this Missouri Star fabric letters tutorial on YouTube I knew I had to make them.

Luckily I had all of the supplies in my stash: a white Kona solids charm pack for the letter fronts, blue Kona yardage in Harbor for the back and Bosal fusible foam stabilizer. My Bosal was double-sided fusible, rather the recommended single-sided fusible; but it worked fine.  

I also had a new set of Pilot FriXion erasable pens that I hadn't tried out yet for fabric marking.  They were amazing --  easy to write with, and disappeared at the touch of the iron.

I cut 6-inch strips from the backing and the fusible foam and ironed them together from the fabric side.  I then printed the template provided by Missouri Star and finally had a use for my CutterPillar Glow light pad!  Popping the template under the cutting mat held it in place nicely so I could trace the letters onto the white squares.  

For each letter I cut squares from the foam/backing layer that were large enough to include the entire letter outline plus about an inch.  The tutorial leaves the backing strip long to reduce waste but I opted to cut them free so they were simpler to stitch around. 

After I sewed the outline of each letter I cut out each letter with my pinking shears.  I used straight scissors for the tight spaces like the negative spaces in letters A, B, O, etc.   The tutorial left these in place, but I felt cutting them out made the letters more recognizable for a learning toy.

I hit the finished letters with the iron to fuse the top layer and remove the ink and they were done!

For my niece's first initial I traced an inverted letter on the backing fabric and used the alphabet on my machine to embroider a message to her before stitching and cutting the letter.  

I popped all 27 letters -- I accidentally made two Js -- into a plastic tote and used my Silhouette Portrait die-cutter to make a quick vinyl alphabet sticker for the top.

I delivered her Letter Box on the first day of school, and she loved it! She immediately showed me all the letters that spell her name -- so much for not knowing her letters!

As she learns to spell, I think she is going to need multiples of some of the letters -- and, the numbers!