ABCs and 123s Wall Hanging

This was my entry for the first week of the One Month to Win It competition where I am currently a contestant! The contest started with 12 contestants and each week 3 are voted off. Luckily, I made it through the first round so below is the tutorial for my project. In other exciting news, I’ve started a shop for my patterns! I’ll still be including free patterns on most posts but the ones that have a more detailed design and need printable pages will be in the shop.

Materials list:
The following supplies are exactly what I used. You could easily modify this design to use a different frame or no frame and just wrap the fabric around a piece of cardboard backing.

• One 14″ tall x 25″ long frame with cardboard backing (glass not necessary) with an opening of
  21 1/2″ x 9 3/4″
• One piece of brown fabric 4″ larger than the cardboard backing from the frame (I used 25 1/2″ x 13 3/4″)
• 1/4″ batting the same size as your brown background fabric
• Six strips of red 1/2″ grosgrain ribbon cut to 26″ with optional black wooden beads threaded onto the bottom of each (a total of 13 feet of ribbon)
• One package Wrights^® scarlet double fold quilt binding bias tape
• One package Wrights^® orange jumbo rick rack
• One roll of 1/4″ fusible web for the border
• Alphabet blocks printed onto cardstock and cut out (pages 6, 7, 8). If printing correctly they should be 2 3/8″ square.
• Number stencils
• Nine fabric scraps for the numbers
• Fusible web for the numbers
• Iron, glue gun, sewing machine (optional), rubber cement (optional)

If you would like to purchase the number blocks that I designed and the alphabet stencils, you can buy them at my new shop here! Your purchase will be delivered instantly as a PDF and will also include printable pages of the instructions provided in this post.

Step 1: Make the applique numbers. First cut out the number stencils and line up your fabrics in order on your background to make sure you like the color choices.

Then cut out rectangles slightly larger than your numbers. Iron your fusible web to the rectangles. I like to first use the tip of my iron to iron down just the center of the rectangles. Then, cut off all the excess fusible web, then iron it down completely. This helps you avoid getting the sticky backing on your iron. If that happens, just wipe it off on a paper towel. Then trace all your number stencils backwards on each rectangle and cut out the numbers.

Step 2: Prepare the background and border. First, cut out your background fabric 4″ larger than the piece of cardboard backing from your frame. Next, center that piece of cardboard on the front of your fabric and trace around it. Cut your bias tape so you have two strips the length of the background and two strips the width of the background.

Then iron open your bias tape strips and pin them down so that the center matches up with the line you drew. Either sew along the centers or use fusible web to iron the strips in place. I did it this way because I initially thought I would only be using a piece of cardboard backing and no frame and I wanted the red border to go behind the backing when I wrapped it around. If you choose to use a frame, you don’t necessarily need to open up the bias tape because it’ll all be hidden behind the frame anyway.