Sorry for the lack of posting! Can you say technical difficulties? Sometimes technology makes me cry…

On the BRIGHT SIDE I have been working on a fun tutorial for you!

For Christmas I wanted to make my two older kids hooded towels. Of course I wanted to spruce them up a little and make them unique so I decided to applique a large fabric letter on the back of each them.

But I wanted this letter to be big. Bigger than one sheet of paper for sure.

But I wanted to be able to do this project at home.

Enter this tutorial!

This tutorial is pretty versatile and you can use it on lots of things so HAVE FUN! It isn’t too late for a little Christmas present magic, right?

Tutorial: Large Fabric Letter Applique

Step 1: Go into photoshop or whatever program you want and find a letter in the style that you like – don’t worry about the size of the letter, just the styling of it. You can also search online for a letter that fits what you are looking for. You need to save this letter as an image (jpg or gif).

Go to BLOCKPOSTERS.com. This website takes a picture you upload and makes it in to a poster…how awesome is that. So first you want to upload the image you just created:

Step 2: Choose how you want your image sliced: how many pages wide, what kind of paper you are using, the paper orientation.

Step 3: Now you will download your new poster image to your computer and print it off! It will print your letter on however many pages you chose.

Step 4:  Now you want to tape your image together. I split my letter over 4 sheets of paper, about 14″ by 16″ in the end. Once you have it taped together, cut it out.

Step 5: Lay out sheets of double-stick fusible web behind your letter, making sure your web is big enough to trace your letter on. Remove the protective layer and stick the sheets to the WRONG SIDE of your fabric.

Step 6: Trace your letter on to the paper of the fusible web.

(I chose to use fusible web but you could skip that if you want to just trace right on to the fabric.)

Step 7:  Cut out your fabric and web along your traced lines.

Step 8: Measure to find the center of your towel/whatever you are appliqueing your letter on. Remove the protective paper from the fusible web and stick on to the towel once centered.

Step 9: Iron your letter on.

Step 10: Sew your letter on. I chose to use a regular straight stitch but you could do zig-zag or any fancy stitch you want.

It was a little tricky to maneuver the bulky towel around the machine, but it worked!

And there you have it.

I finished my towel up by sewing a matching bias tape around the hood part. Super easy, personalized project that my little hooligans will love!