Cute?
You betcha! I just love them. And loved making them, too! They were sooo easy and a great use of fabric scraps {read on for heart example}! Here’s the deal.
Find yourself a kidlet. Almost any will work, but it never hurts if he or she is extra cute.
Now ask the kidlet his or her name. Hopefully it’s not Rumpelstiltskin as this would then turn into an all-day project.
Find your self some chunks of chipboard. {Chipboard is the cardboard on the back of a legal pad.} Nothing too heavy since you will need to cut curves with scissors and anything heavier than a medium weight kills your hands. If you can’t find enough scrap chipboard around the house, Hobby Lobby sells the stuff in huge sheets. For cheap.
Decide on some fabric to cover your letters. A different fabric for each letter or all from one fabric. You decide. {Often this decision takes longer to make than the actual letters.} Quilting weight cotton provides the best selection and is easy to work with.
Select a font you like in Word (or the word processing program of your choice). I recommend a nice rounded font (it’s harder to wrap the fabric around pointy areas serifs create). I used Cooper Black. This one plays nice.
Enlarge the font to the size you’d like your letters to be. I enlarged mine to 500, which gave me a letter that is approximately 6″ tall. {You need to type in the “500″ rather than look for it in the drop down box.}
Print out the gigantic letters.
These are your templates. Place a piece of carbon paper or transfer paper between the letters and the chipboard and trace.
Using sharp scissors, cut out the chipboard letters carefully.
Go to your fabric stash and decide which fabric goes with which letter. Roughly cut out the fabric allowing about 1/2″ excess around the entire letter including all ascenders and descenders.
Now, cover the right side of the chipboard with spray adhesive and quickly glue the fabric on, wrapping the excess fabric to the back. I used fabric glue on the back as it was a little easier to work with. Be sure to clip any curves and corners to get the fabric taut. Cut a small access slit inside closed off areas and then clip the curves.
I covered the back of the letters with felt just to neaten them up. Before gluing on the felt, insert a ribbon loop for hanging if desired.
You can add all kinds of embellishments too. A bow adds a nice, girly touch.
If you just can’t seem to find a munchkin that needs/wants their name in fabric letters, how about a teacher? They’d look great on the front of a teacher’s desk or above the blackboard.
Oh, and a BIG thank you to Heather over at Rue de la Clef for all the work staging and photographing the finished product! They look perfectly placed! Oh, and you didn’t do too bad a job on the kidlet either. 
And with Valentine’s Day coming up….use the same process to make these lovelies!
Here’s a link to heart templates.
Have fun!
