How To Do Quilted Lettering

The popularity of WORD QUILTS continues to flourish. Usually, words in quilts arrive as text on fabric or as applique letters. There are a handful of books on piecing alphabets: Stitch Your Story by Sarah Fielke; Quilt Talk by Sam Hunter; Text It! by Sherri Noel; Word Play Quilts by Tonya Ricucci; Alphabet Soup by Tammy Johnson (folk art); Alphabet Soup by Jaybird Quilts (using the Hex-N-More ruler); Alphabet Adventures by Marianne Jeffrey. PDF alphabets of all kinds (pieced, applique, and foundation paper piecing) are available on Etsy. The applique alphabets are too numerous to name, but here is a listing of Etsy designers offering traditional pieced or foundation alphabets: Kelby Sews, Right Patterns, Patch and Dot, Sew Fresh Quilts, From Blank Pages, Lori Kleiner Eckert, Daniela Patchwork, Art East Quilting Co., Ellis and Higgs.

How about words IN quilting? Of course, with practice and good penmanship, you can free-motion stitch words into quilts. But sometimes you need a larger presence for your quilted lettering than script can provide. Wouldn’t it be nice to use all the keyboard fonts in your quilting? Here is a new technique for embellishing fonts with free-motion shading.

STEP 1

Select any font you like, print the letters in the size you need, and use your favorite method to transfer the design to your quilt. Outline the letter with free motion quilting.

STEP 2

Outline again, 1/4" inside original quilting.

STEP 3

Scribble (long and short up-and-down free-motions quilting) to fill in the 1/4” gap between outlines.

STEP 4

This step is extra fun.

Turn the tension on your sewing machine all the way up. Slowly, zig-zag back and forth, filling in the central area of the letter remaining inside the 1/4” border. The bobbin thread will create a lattice/lace filling in the font!