How to Make Fabric Covered Letters

Let’s make pretty fabric covered letters to hang on the wall!

Decorate your walls with our fabric covered letters craft. Make one letter, or make a word, it’s up to you. This is a fun craft for all ages.

wood letters wrapped in strips of fabric to hang on the wall
Make pretty fabric covered letters to hang on your walls.

These fabric covered letters are so easy to make. They require very few supplies, and we show you below how inexpensive this craft can be. It’s a great project for kids through adults.

How to make fabric covered letters

There are so many options available to make these wall letters. All you need is a little creativity, and a few basic supplies, and you are ready to make this quick and easy craft.  

Related: 18 Sweet Letter ‘S’ Crafts and Activities

A wood letter S, fabric and a glue gun to make fabric covered letters
Gather a large letter, fabric, and a glue gun to make fabric covered letters.

Supplies needed to make fabric covered letters

  • Large letter – wood, paper mache, cardboard, or foam board
  • Fabric – assorted colors and patterns
  • Hot glue gun with glue sticks
  • Scissors

We have used a large wooden letter ‘S’ for our project. You can use any letter or group of letters that you like. You also don’t need to purchase a wooden letter because there are many other options available; a paper mache letter, cut a letter out of a cereal box, or cut larger letters out of foam board.

Instructions for making fabric covered letters

Step 1 for making fabric covered letters is to tear strips of fabric in different patterns and colors
Tear strips of fabric to wrap around your letter.

Step 1

Group together between 3-6 different fabrics to wrap around your letter.

Use your scissors to snip the end of the fabric about 1-1.5 inches wide. Hold the fabric with one hand and with the other tear the fabric (at the scissor cut) into a long strip.

The reason we tear the fabric instead of cutting it is that it gives it a frayed edge instead of a completely smooth cut edge. I think the frayed edges overlapping one another look so much nicer wrapped around the letter.

Step 2 for making fabric covered letters is to glue a strip of fabric to the letter, and then wrap it around the letter.
Glue the end of strip of fabric to the letter and then wrap it around.

Step 2

Using the hot glue, glue one end of a strip of fabric to the edge of your letter. Wrap the fabric strip around and around the letter, overlapping it slightly as you go.

When you need to change colors, make sure to start on the edge, even if that means you are overlapping slightly with the previous strip.

fabric strips in floral and sold colors wrapped around a letter S to hang on the wall.
Wrap assorted patterns and colors of fabric strips around your letter.
Our finished fabric covered letter
A wood letter S wrapped in colorful fabric strips
A wooden letter S wrapped in strips of fabric to hang on the wall.

Here are even more wall letters that we have made previously with kids.

fabric wall letters made out of foam board and decorated by kids
the word love made out of foam board and wrapped in fabric and yarn
Yield: 1

Fabric Covered Letters

fabric covered letters

Make our fabric covered letters to hang on your wall.

Prep Time 5 minutes
Active Time 30 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Difficulty easy
Estimated Cost $10

Materials

  • Large letter - wood, paper mache, cardboard, or foam board
  • Fabric - assorted patterns and colors

Tools

  • Scissors
  • Hot glue gun with glue sticks

Instructions

  1. Snip a section of fabric approximately 1-1.5 inches wide. Put one hand on the fabric and use your other hand to tear the strip of fabric from the cut to make a frayed edge on the fabric.
  2. Using hot glue attach the end of the fabric strip to the edge of the letter. Wind the fabric around the letter overlapping it a little.
  3. Repeat step two with as many different fabric strips as you like.

More alphabet crafts from Kids Activities Blog

Have you made your own fabric wrapped letters? Did you make just one letter or a full word?

45 Comments

  1. Wow, what a fantastic way to let children express themselves! I love how the random placement and the use of various textures looks on the finished letters. If I win the giveaway I’d help my 4 year old daughter make her name for her room and either our last name or another fun word like “joy” or “love” for the living room. Thanks for the inspiration!

  2. Wow these are so cute and I love that the kids were involved! They look great and have the greatest memories attached now! If I won the giveaway I’d like to do something similar but with flowers and butterflies to hang on the walls! My daughter loves Butterflies!

  3. I”m thinking monster collage trying out all of those different supplies. I bet those scissors would cut great on fun foam.

    Also, then I have a chance of my kids actually doing the project I’m thinking of.

  4. We have a small aviation museum near us that has models of the Wright Brothers planes that fascinate my kids. I bet those foam boards would be great for making little airplanes out of, which is something we’ve been meaning to try. Wouldn’t it be fun to sail your own little airplane off the deck and into the yard?

  5. My two and five year old both love to use glue sticks. Last week we made paper pizzas. We may just work on some collages.

  6. ELIZABETH says:

    My son has been begging me to make an interactive city wall since he saw one online. I bet the posterboard here would be perfect for making cars and trucks to “move” (with velcro) on a city street! The wall art is very cool too! We could definitely use the idea of wrapping textiles to make the buildings on our wall scene even more amazing!

  7. So cool! I thought it would be fun to make a fish pond for my toddlers but didn’t want to just used construction paper. The foam board looks perfect for little fish and maybe even the pond. And now that I look at your letters how fun would it be for the kids to make unique fish of their own like you did with the letters. So excited!

  8. I think we’d use any or all of those Elmer’s supplies in all of our crafty art projects! I have a letter one like yours in process, but never thought of the collage aspect for it! It looks so nice! I guess we did something similar for our Birthday “3”.

  9. Oh my! How can we top your wonderfully gorgeous letters? They look fantastic? What would we make? What would we make?

    We love the craft foam in our house too and would probably make more “pegs” for our art washing line.. we colour the pegs in bright colours and then cut out funky animal faces out of the foam and glue it on. Perfect.

    Thanks for a fab giveaway

    Maggy

  10. We would make some funky frames to highlight the first day of class.

    Your letters are great! I like the “painted” look of them.

  11. Love those letters!! We’d love to use those supplies along with a couple boxes we’ve been saving to make a dinosaur cave + parking garage, because my son’s been wanting a place for his two loves (dinosaurs and cars) to share.

  12. I’d like to make a hair bow holder with my toddler! Maybe a foam flower top, with ribbons hanging down to hold barrettes and bows? !

    LOVE the letters you all made- very cool looking!

  13. My daughter would make animals, dinosaurs, and probably puppets–she currently loves puppets. Great giveaway!

  14. well since my kids just had their rooms painted this weekend and new carpet comes tomorrow I’m thinking they would love to take their cork boards and give them new life/decor to match their new room colors. Similar to your letters, cover the boards with fabric, add ribbon for holding photos, add sequins around the edges and more. whatever they wanted!!

  15. Oh wow what an awesome giveaway! I love the design the children came up with. Well we would use the craft supplies to decorate our new home! We will be moving to another state. Our homeschooling crew will use it to decorate their room and have an under the sea theme..a wall dedicated to oceans and each day they can see their under water adventure. We would use the fabric letters to make their ocean vocab words and make little fish all over the wall with our art supplies… My homeSCHOOL of fish would love this!!

  16. I love this idea. Family Fun had a idea using sticks and paint which I was planning on doing but I think I like this idea better. We could do both. For the giveaway we’ve been really into making books and wall art. These supplies would help us out tremendously with our continuous art activities. With 5 homeschooled children one can never have enough art supplies!

  17. Love this idea. The girls and I are building fairy houses this week. I want to start letters next week so that we end closer to school starting. This would be a fantastic way to celebrate each letter.

  18. I’ve been thinking about creative ways to “illustrate” our favorite story books. My plan was a basic popsicle stick theater with pictures we print and color. We could get much more interesting results with all that great texture. Thanks for getting my wheels freshly turning.

  19. Heather W. says:

    I LOVE THESE!! the letters are so great. And I love how all the kids came together to make some fun stuff.
    I ask my 5yr old son what would he like to do with somthing like this and he said “We could make the airplanes for my wall MOM!! And we coould cut out stars and wrap them in your shiny fabric and put them all over the ceiling or paint them with glow paint. Then we could make some planets and decorate them in more fabric like blue and green for earth and red and brown for the Mars one then some how make rings around a big one!!!”. He is excited and his little mine is working so he ram off to draw is idea on paper, lol…. I would have to make some cupcakes wrapped in fun fabric for the shop, and try and see if this would be the perfect thing for some large fairy wings covered in lots of fabric scrapes for a custome I’m making.. :c) fingers crossed on that last one..
    Thank you for the chance to win

  20. Love the letters! We may have to make some.
    If I win the prize I can only imagine the project my son would come up with. One that we’ve been wanting to do is make a “town” for his cars to drive through. Complete with stop signs, roads, buildings. This prize pack would be perfect to put this city together!

  21. Those are awesome! Hmmmm … where can we put some of those great letters? You’ve got me thinking. Thanks for the inspiration!

  22. I’m thinking these supplies would be good for making Christmas Decorations.

    melodyj(at)gmail(dot)com

  23. Those letters are really beautiful!

    Next month is my son’s 4th birthday. I’d love to use those supplies to make some dinosaur decorations. I could cut dinosaurs from the foam board. Then we could use fabric and tissue paper to cover them (similar to what you did, but without the string). I’d do several different colors (blue dinosaur, green, red, etc). I think I could also make a cool volcano with tissue paper and ribbon spouting from the top and flowing down the sides. Once his party is over, we could move the decorations to his room; multipurpose!

    I’d also like to make a picture board for my daughter. I’d cover a foam board with fabric and criss-cross ribbon around it to hold pictures (the ribbons would appear diamond shaped from the front). I’d add a Panda bear to a lower corner for her too, she loves pandas! Then she could easily stick pictures in the diamonds without tacks or anything and I would have a bunch of tacked-up pictures on her wall.

  24. This project is so fun and creative! It’s great that at first thought you’re making a mess but apparently it comes out actually quirky and colorful.

  25. I’m in Australia, so not eligible for the competition – but wanted to say how cute I thought the letters were! This would be great for kidlets learning their first letters – I know my girls would be highly motivated to make their own initials!

  26. My little girl and I would love to use these supplies to make a pasta and dried beans collage! first we will draw out a basic flower garden scene with some bugs and a path and then fill out with varied pasta, beans shapes. or maybe a fun seaside theme collage with some coconut trees, a tranquil sea, seagulls, sand etc depicted with wool / paper/ cloth scraps from past projects. the possibilities are endless!!

  27. We could really use all of those art supplies! Hmmm! What would we make? My girls really love scrapbooks and journals, so I think we would use cereal boxes and the Elmers supplies and make our own creative books.

  28. Simple and lovely. Thanks for sharing! I would love to do an alphabet for the long hall this way.

  29. With school about to start, I would suggest we make customized message/bulletin boards for notes and artwork. But, knowing my boys, they would probably end up making buildings, airplanes or treasure boxes.

  30. I just learned how to make stars with one and cut and I would love to make stars with the boards (that glow in the dark) for my sons’ room. I want to make planets too using that balloon wrap the string/yarn method. I think he would live it!

  31. I would use these supplies for countless fun art and craft projects in the preschool class I teach. The first one would be a community collage Where all of the children get to participate in beautiful collage as our first activity as a new classroom community. They will all glue on found objects and old things. Then as a group we will paint it all shiny and colorful. It Will hang in the classroom all year as a reminder to us about all being integral parts of a great community.
    We will share pictures of it in its glorious completion of course.

  32. My littles have been very interested in making a family tree for our ‘school’ wall ~ this would be perfect for that! =)

  33. Kristy Life n Reflection says:

    Great craft project!

  34. moriyah shalom says:

    Wow! What a great idea. I have seen fabric letters but this is the best idea so far. It turned out really really great. With the elmers supplies, I would for sure do this project. Even without them! We have been doing all sorts of cutting and gluing this summer. I have three boys 7,5,3 and this is the first year they are really getting into my little crafty projects and making their own.We are running out of supplies. 🙂

  35. I would love to do this activity within my speech therapy sessions with kids! How fun to let them do their initials!

  36. Great idea! I love the look of the letters like this I have seen, but hate that they were expensive! You’ve taken that aspect out of it! 🙂 Thanks so much for sharing!

  37. great project! so smart to take this idea into the realm of kid’s crafts! loved the manilla folder car garage too, and thanks so much for sharing on Craft Schooling Sunday, I hope you’ll be back to share some more quality projects! (and from the look of things it seems quite likely you’ll make it into the features next week!)

  38. I teach a 4H class and these supplies would be perfect for them to use. Elmers products are the best!

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