My daughter’s birthday was coming up and I’d been saving fabric birthday sign inspo for months.
You probably know the ones I mean, mismatched fabric letters for the sweetest handmade feel. Obviously, I had to make one myself! The whole thing came together faster than I expected, and of course my daughter loves it so much, I’ll be bringing it out every year now!
What you need
- A 1.5m x 2.5m piece of fabric for the base.
- Scrap fabric in your colours (I dug through my stash and pulled anything that looked good together)
- Fiskars pinking shears – these are the hero of the project, more on that in a second!
- Paper for letter templates
- Spray adhesive
- Sewing machine
How to do it
- Print or draw your letters on paper first and cut them out as templates. Then trace them onto your fabric and cut using the pinking shears. (Here’s the thing about pinking shears – they cut that zigzag edge that stops fabric from fraying, which means no hemming, no finishing, no extra steps. You just cut and go. I cannot overstate how satisfying this is).
- Lay everything out before you commit to anything. This is not optional, its’s the onlky way to tell if your design is centred. One thing you can do to make this easier is fold your fabric in half and mark the middle, then pick the middle letter (P in happy and between T and H in birthday) and lay the centre of the design out first.
- Once you’re happy, spray adhesive on the back of each letter to hold them in place, then sew them down with a straight stitch. Add some stars and a little candle wick and flame on the I.
I haven’t yet hemmed the bottom and top of the banner (birthday deadline presssure haha) but for a long lasting banner I suggest you do 🙂
Get the letter template
I’ve put the letters together as a file so you don’t have to draft them yourself.
