Fabric Covered Decorative Letters Tutorial

This post was originally published as a guest post on the fabulous blog Someday Crafts, and I'm posting it now here on the blog as well.

When we moved to our new place, the wall above my daughter's bed seemed empty. I wanted to hang something there, but didn't know what. That was when I saw cute decorative letters, and decided to make those for her. It's pretty simple, and I prepared an easy tutorial so that you can make them too!

You can use store bought wooden or paper mache letters for this project, but it's so much fun to make these yourself, so I'll teach you how to do that.

For the letters you'll need -
A piece of cardboard
Empty toilet rolls
Scissors
X-Acto knife
Glue Gun

Using the cardboard, trace your chosen letters, twice of each, and cut them.

Draw parallel lines on your empty paper roll, about 2.5 cm (1") apart, then cut.

Using hot glue, glue your circles onto one of the letters.

Then apply glue to the other side of the circles and place the other letter on top. The hot glue dries quickly, so work fast and gradually.

Cut a few strips of cardboard (if you're using regular cardboard box, make sure to cut the cardboard perpendicular to the waves).

Using these strips and glue gun, finish your letter. It doesn't have to be very accurate, as we're going to cover it with batting.

Let it dry for a few minutes, then you can move on to the next step - cover your letter with fabric!
For that, you'll need -
Your letter (obviously...)
Fabric
Some sort of batting
Scissors
Spray adhesive
Piece of felt

Cut the fabric and batting to match the shape of the letter. As we're going to work with curves and corners, make sure you leave enough fabric for mistakes. Place the batting on the letter and the fabric on the batting. Using the spray adhesive, glue the fabric to the back of the letter. This part can be kind of tricky - each letter and its own problems...

A few words about working with spray adhesive - Spray from a distance of 20-30 cm (8"-12") on wrong side of the fabric and on the back of the letter, wait 10-30 seconds and carefully apply fabric onto letter. If you have wrinkles, lift fabric and apply again.

Now to the back of the letter - cut a piece of felt a bit smaller than your letter, then use the spray adhesive to apply onto the back of the letter.

That's it! You can now hang your letter or word on the wall. Since they're made of cardboard, they're super light, so it shouldn't be a problem. You can glue a loop of yarn to the back or just use double stick tape.