Felt Stuffed Toy Letters

When Lucy was younger, I made her some felt letters to help her learn to spell her name. I found this old video we had taken of her using them a couple years ago~

Somehow we’ve hung on to them over the last few years, and I thought it’d be a great way to teach her how to spell her formal name ‘Lucine’ by making some more. And while I was at it, why not do Theo’s name too. It’s never too early to be exposing kids to letters!

I really love how the felt letters are so hands on and inviting. Kids can easily move them around and flip them over to make words or just learn the letters themselves. And the best part is that they are so easy to make ~ you can do while you are anywhere. It doesn’t take much concentration at all. I was able to do these while the kids were playing over the last few days.

First I typed out the letters I wanted to make on my word processing program. I played around with different fonts. Arial seemed to work the best for me and I sized it to 420. I printed out my letters on paper, cut them out and traced them onto my felt. (I love using 100% wool felt! It’s very soft and feels good to work with. I’ve usually ordered mine through Felt on the Fly on Etsy.) For me, the most time consuming part was just cutting out all the letters. Make sure to make two of each for a front and back!

The letters ready to be sewn and stuffed!

front and back

I pinned the letters together to keep them from sliding around as I worked, then chose some embroidery thread to use.

pinned and ready

I had a huge stash from when I actually had time to do embroidery in the past, so I searched for the closest matches I had to the felt. (There are 6 strands in the embroidery thread~ I pulled it into two sets of three for this project.)

Then I began stitching around the edges using a simple whip stitch. (Here’s a little tutorial if you are unfamiliar with this kind of stitch.)

Save some space before you finish to stuff it!

adding stuffing before finishing

Finally, I sewed up the remainder and tied it off!

Finished!

All the completed letters~

Lucy and Theo enjoyed playing with the completed felt letters. My next goal is to do the letters for our long, 9 letter last name and then finally the rest of the alphabet!

Here’s a previous post on using wool felt to make a toy ball!

 

~Shared on Waldorf Wednesday~