Fabric Letters

Make your own word banner with these adorable fabric letters. They are easy to make, completely customizable and perfect for any occasion!

Hey y’all! I am back today to share a fun project that you can make yourself and it is literally perfect for any holiday or gathering! These super cute fabric letters are ideal for making a banner that you can totally personalize. You pick the letters to spell out whatever you want and make them in your choice of fabric!

I decided to make a banner for my upcoming 4th of July mantel that I will be sharing soon. So I was looking for a way to spell out USA and came across some cute fabric letter banners. I knew I could easily make one myself and that got my wheels turning on all the things they could be used for!

Imagine spelling out the word MERRY for Christmas or THANKFUL for fall. You could use them to spell out your baby’s name to hang on the wall in her nursery or even your graduate’s name at his open house. It would be a really sweet way to display a new couple’s last name at their wedding reception! See… lots of ideas!! What else can you come up with?

I was able to use some scrap fabric that I had around to make these letters, but pick out whatever fabric coordinates with the reason you have for making the letters.

This is a sewing project so you do have to have a sewing machine but you don’t need any special sewing skills. If you can follow a line, you can sew these fabric letters!

Watch the quick video (Coming soon)

Don’t want to read all the instructions? I have included a video in this post showing you how to make these fabric letters. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. Also, if you ever want to slow down the video, just click on the three dots in the lower right hand corner of the video and you can change the playback speed. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading.

Supplies to make fabric letters

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

Fabric of your choice – a fat quarter of each different color of fabric would do
Batting or felt
Regular scissors
Pinking Shears
Small scissors (snips)
Large eye embroidery needle
Jute twine
Letter templates (see below)

Print out the letter templates

The first step is to print out the letter templates onto regular paper. The finished letters are about 6.25″ in height by varied widths so only 1-2 letters fit on a page while printing them off. You can just print the letters you need to spell whatever word you are making. When you are printing, make sure you print this pattern at 100% to make sure the size is correct. Every printer is different so just make sure your settings are not set to ‘fit to page‘ or that the box is not checked letting your printer make changes.

Getting ready to sew fabric letters

After printing the letter templates that you need, cut them out. Don’t worry about cutting out the inside of the letters, like the inside of the letter A below.

Use your cut out letter to figure out how much fabric and batting you will need to cut out. Place the letter on a layer of batting and fabric and cut a rectangle of fabric around the letter, leaving at least ½–¾ inch around the letter.

As you can see in the picture above, I used some scraps of batting that I had from a previous quilting project. If you have any scraps around you can easily sew them together using a zigzag stitch to make one piece.

Cut another rectangle of fabric that is the same size as the first layer. Sandwich the batting in between the two layers of fabric. Make sure the fabric is right side out on both sides of the fabric bundle.

Pin the template into place on top of the fabric bundle.

How to sew a fabric letter

Using your sewing machine, sew around the letter template following the line around the entire letter. Go slow when going around curves or coming into a corner so you don’t over sew. Also sew around the inside of the letters. You can just sew right on top of the paper.

After you finish sewing, remove the pins and pull off the template.

You will have to tear away the paper from the stitches around the inside of the letter.

After you remove all the paper, you will be left with the sewn letter on your fabric block.

Cut around the fabric letter

Next, using some pinking shears or wavy scissors, cut a 1/4″ seam around the outside of the letter.

Use a sharp pair of snips to cut out the inside of the letters. First make a tiny cut in the middle of the fabric and from there you can cut close the the sew line. I thought it looked better to have a smaller edge on the inside.

Here is the completed DIY fabric letter. They turned out fantastic and are really nice substantial quilted letters.

How to make a fabric letter banner

Once you have all your letters cut out, the easiest way to make it into a banner is to cut a couple small slits in the back of the letters and feed some twine through the slits with a large eyed needle.

I have also seen where people have sewn some tabs into the top of the letters, however, it was more work than I wanted to do. Also, you don’t even see the back of the letters so what does it matter.

Most people will just be hanging it up and leaving it so it won’t get a lot of wear and tear. If you are going to be moving the banner around a lot, then maybe the tabs are a good idea. If not, save yourself the work, in my opinion.

Do you have something you could make one of these banners for? I will be posting my 4th of July mantel with my banner soon, but first I have another fun craft to share with y’all so stay tuned! Chat soon friends!