You Are Loved: Scrappy Appliqué Letters with Free Motion Quilting 

I got a new free motion quilting foot a few weeks ago and I have not been responsible about it. I've gone completely down a rabbit hole making fabric signs — letters cut from scraps, arranged into words, stitched down onto linen. It's the kind of project that starts as "let me just try this foot" and turns into a pile of wall art in the making.

This one is for my son's room: YOU ARE LOVED, in twelve letters, each one cut from a completely different fabric.

Starting with the Letters

The fun part of a project like this is that it's basically an excuse to raid every scrap pile you have. Each letter gets its own fabric — and they don't need to match. Actually, the more they don't match, the better. I used a mix of whatever I had on hand: a pink cherry print, an orange dotted pattern, a green-on-black floral for the L, and more. You're looking at fabrics from half a dozen different eras and manufacturers, and somehow together they read as joyful.

I cut the letters freehand, which sounds harder than it is. You can print a font you like, trace it onto paper, cut out the template, and use it to cut each letter from your chosen fabric. For letters with interior cutouts — O, A, D, R — you cut away the center after the outer shape is done. Fussy, but satisfying.

If you want to try this without digging through your own scraps, our Scrappy Squares bundles are honestly perfect for this. You get a nice mix of prints and colorways already cut down, so you're spending time making things instead of hunting for fabric.

The Glue Changes Everything

Before I started stitching, I positioned all the letters on my linen background and basted them down with Roxanne Glue-Baste-It. If you haven't used this stuff, it's a temporary fabric glue — a tiny dot on the back of each letter holds it in place while you stitch without pinning, without the letter shifting, without anything sliding around under the foot. It washes out completely. I use it constantly now.

The linen background is a heavier weight, which gives the whole thing some body and helps it hang flat on the wall. Muslin works too, but the linen has a nicer drape and feels more finished even before you add a thing.

Free Motion Around Every Edge

This is where the new foot actually earns its place. With the feed dogs dropped and the free motion foot on, I stitched around the edge of each letter — following the shape, echoing it once or twice in some places. The thread is a variegated multi-color that moves through red, green, blue, yellow. It reads almost like a hand-embroidered outline from a distance, which is exactly what I was going for.

The letters with interior holes get two passes — one around the outside, one around the inside cutout. The second pass is the trickier one because you're stitching in a tight space and turning the piece frequently. Go slow. No one is timing you.

The back of the piece is one of my favorite things to look at mid-project — you can see the whole design in reverse, threads jumping from letter to letter, and it looks like a kind of organized chaos that somehow resolves into something legible from the front.

The Finished Panel

Once every letter was stitched down, I trimmed the linen, left a small fringe on the bottom edge, and pressed the whole thing. It reads clearly from across the room — which matters for something going on a kid's wall. I might add a few fun stars, hearts, or other small designs before hanging it. I'm excited for my son to see it!

Every letter is a different fabric. The purple batik Y next to the yellow sunflower O. The floral-on-black A next to the daisy E. The olive green V that's a little quieter than the rest. Nothing matches and it still holds together because all the fabrics are cotton, similar in weight and scale, and the consistent thread color ties them.

It's going up in my son's room this week. The whole thing took maybe an afternoon once I had the letters cut — the free motion stitching goes faster than you'd expect once you find your rhythm with it.

If you've been wanting to try free motion quilting and haven't found a project that feels like a low-stakes starting point, this is it. There's no quilt to match, no pattern to follow, just fabric shapes and a foot that lets you go wherever you need to go. And if you want a ready-made mix of prints to cut into — our cotton scraps are a good place to start, or grab a Scrappy Squares bundle if you want things already cut down to a workable size. Our Scrap Happy Club boxes are also full of exactly the kind of mixed prints that make a project like this sing.

More signs in progress. This rabbit hole has a ways to go.