How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

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When we went to Sayulita last year, I brought back wayyyy too many handmade felt and yarn souvenirs. The pompoms and tassels were just too good to pass up. A couple of shops had these beautiful embroidered felt letters, so I tried to snag one for each member of our family, but we couldn’t find an R anywhere for Ryan. Since we returned, the letters have been just sitting around, waiting for me to find a solution to the missing R problem. So I finally just sucked it up and decided to make one! Here’s how to make embroidered felt letter decorations.

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

Materials

  • felt sheet
  • embroidery thread
  • embroidery needle
  • scissors
  • cotton batting

Make Time: 1.5 Hours

Step 1: Cut out your letters. Cut two identical pieces for each letter that you want to make. I cut our letters approximately 4″ tall. Be sure to cut the letters themselves about 1.5″ thick if your letters are the same height. The taller the letter, the thicker the lines need to be.

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

Step 2: Start embroidering on the front of the top letter. You can totally use your imagination and embroider any shapes, colors, or designs that you like. I tried to vaguely mimic the letters that we already had. Here’s a good tutorial on embroidery if you need a refresher.

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

Step 3: Once your embroidery is completed, tie off all loose ends of thread on the back of the letter. Lay the embroidered letter flat on top of the identical felt letter, creating a stack of two.

Step 4: If your letter has any inner shapes, like R, D, O, A, or similar, start the next step on the inner shape. Thread your needle with embroidery thread (we separated our thread into two halves to make it a little thinner) and knot the end. Then start sewing around the edges of the inner shape, using a blanket stitch. Here’s a nice clear tutorial on blanket stitches. Tie off when completed.

Step 5: Once the inner shape is sewn shut, start on the outer edges of your letter. You’ll start the stitch on one side of the letter and stitch all the way around, stopping about 1 inch short of where you started. Leave the threaded needle attached.

Step 6: With the threaded needle still attached, stuff the letter full of cotton batting. If you find that it’s difficult to get batting into the far corners of your letter, use a pencil or another thin instrument to press the batting into the corners. I like to stuff mine until the batting is quite compact and full.

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

Step 7: Once completely stuffed, sew the remaining open 1 inch of seam and tie off your thread.

Step 8: To make a hanger at the top of the letter, just thread your needle with a little extra embroidery thread and insert the needle in and out of the top of the letter once. Tie the thread together if desired.

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

Step 9: To hang our letters, I made a few fun little extras. They’re all hanging from a piece of braided yarn. To make this, just cut off a few feet of a bunch of bright colors of yarn, braid them together, and knot the ends.

Step 10: For more embellishment, add some oversized tassels or pompoms to your hanger. Here’s a tassel tutorial (just make them super-sized instead of mini), and here’s a pompom tutorial.

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

I’m so glad to have this project finally done and hanging up in our home! And the best part is that I spent zero dollars, because I had all of those materials already hanging around (and I bet you do too). It’s such a fun memory of our Mexico trip to have up in the studio, too. Hope you try it! xoxo

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

How to Make Embroidered Felt Letter Decorations

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11 Comments

  1. These are darling and it looks like something I could actually do. Maybe these will be gifts for next Christmas!

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