Say "g" - Liberated Letter Making Tutorial

My plan when I started to work on making my pieced letters was to use Tonya's tutorial. Anyone who has used it in the past knows she is a master at pieced letters. Apparently, A LOT more people will know about her as her technique will be coming out in a book in December! Yay for Tonya! She's even going to be on The Quilt Show {click this link to read about her experience taping the show}

Unfortunately, this means that her fabulous tutorial is no longer available.
But, I persevered and made up my own letters.


First I measured across the top of my block to see how many inches I had to use for my word.

I sketched out roughly a few different ways to write the letters so I could see how many inches each letter should take up to look balanced. I wrote down my measurements at the bottom and winged it!

How I Made My "G"

I started with my background piece for the 'g' . I think it's 5 - 7 inches high (more than I need) and 3-4 inches wide (again more than I need because with liberated - or free form piecing - you do still need to account for seam allowances and the angles.)

Here's a few pretty photos for you.



(I also used the sections to make piece # 1 and #3 in the photo below.)
The centre in the top of the 'g', I fussy cut one of the flowers in the fabric.
Cut out a shape from your background fabric to use here.




Click to make this next photo larger. You can see I just stitched the centre piece of the 'g' after trimming the flower to make it more circular. You could turn under the edges, but I left mine exposed. You can also see I made the top left side of the 'g' have some curve to it.I added the curve by putting a square piece of background fabric right side down over the corner.
Like I did here for the 'e'. Then I sewed diagonally across the letter, opposite the outside corner.

Press the fabric back and square up your new corner.


You can see in the photo that not all of the letters ended up being the size I guessed they should be. No problem. I just added strips of background fabric between them - and at the ends. In some cases, like between the 'n' and the 'e' I trimmed the 'n' skinnier because I thought the 2 letters got lost touching each other. A thin strip of background helped define them better.

I also staggered where my letters sat - not everyone is on the same line! I just added strips of background either above or below the letter to move it's position. This really helped in this word because of the hanging 'g' - I avoided the hanging by using a capital "I" and floating some of my other letters.

I plan to piece some more words around this block, and applique one too.

Try adding some words to your quilts. You just might LOVE what they have to say!

With Joy,
Sarah Vee