Letters. . . We've Got Letters

Remember that little ditty? (Was that from a TV show? I remember the ditty, but not where it's from. I couldn't even find any info from Google or Wikipedia!)

First, I want to apologize to everyone I upset with my last post. Yes, I really did throw that ugly quilt-ish thing in the trash. I had no idea everyone would be so upset by that! I'm sorry. If I'd known that others thought it wasn't that ugly, I would have gladly sent it to whoever wanted it. I will be sending the ugly fabric strips that I've culled from my stash to Wendy at Inky Threads and Donna (no blog), who are willing to put them to good use.

I have made good progress on my color challenge quilt. And we're going to play a little game with it today. I play with my letters before I sew them together! I put them on the design wall and see how many phrases or words I can come up with, before I get to the one I'm really doing. I think it's fun. So, see if you can guess what phrase I'm really making before you get to the bottom of the post and the photo with the real phrase. This is kind of like Wheel of Fortune. . . just picture me as Vanna! And you don't get to buy any letters, they just show up. *grin* Sorry, there's no prizes, just some general silliness. Remember, playing is good for you!

OK, here we go:

Here's the second bit I came up with. Actually, the first bit is in my previous post, if you want to start there. But if you scroll down to look at it, you'll see the end of this post (and the answer), so maybe you should click here instead.

I don't know how other people do this, but when I'm going to make letters, I start out by writing down the word or phrase, and figure out what letters I'll be making. This phrase is the longest I've done yet, so I thought it was particularly important this time. I figured out how many of which letters, and then started making the easiest ones. Mostly to see what size things were coming out, and as kind of a warm-up before I got to the tougher letters.

I started with the U's, then went to the T's. There's quite a few T's. I got a couple of the T's too short, so I made some more that were taller. They're easy to trim to the height I want when I start sewing things together. I left the shorter T in "got" because it fit well with the other letters in that word.

I wasn't going to make O's, as I wanted to do them with some embellishment. But I quickly determined that wasn't gonna happen, so I made some O's. Then, because I was warmed up on the O's, I decided to do the E and the G, since they're similar construction. Next came the B's. They're a little harder, but still similar construction. I think I got them a little on the small side, but I'm not gonna re-make them! This isn't supposed to be perfect, right?

My biggest problem with this was getting confused with which fabric was for the letters and which was the background! I guess my brain is used to dark letters on a light background, and as you can see, this is backwards from that. This little problem happened way too many times!

By this time, I had all the easy letters done, and had to move on to the more difficult ones. I'm getting better at N's and H's. My first H, which you can see in "the", turned out to really be too small. So I made another H, and then discovered that I can't count. . . I need 2 H's! So, then I made the N's a little big, but I figured they're easy enough to trim to the right height.

On to the "S" - that came out a little small too, but acceptable. I'm getting better at them too, as long as I have a sketch or photo to follow. Lastly, the W. I thought I'd just do that like I did the N's, only upside down, and I think it came out pretty good! And not giganto, either!

Also, please notice my punctuation. It's my first punctuation, and it took some thought. It was pretty easy to sew, once I determined how to do it.

So, have you figured out my phrase yet? This picture up above has all the letters needed for the phrase, just not in the right order. Last chance to guess!

And here's the "real" phrase! Did you guess correctly? If you did, then you should be proud of yourself. That was a hard one.

Please notice my cool question mark! It's maybe a little big, but I think it's good. Another first!

So, now I'm putting together my words. These will be the center of the quilt. The minimum size is 24 inches by 24 inches. I was worried that this would be a lot bigger than that, and now I can see that this is shrinking considerably as I put it together. The top "button" is 17 inches long. I scrunched the next one a little bit, so it's not quite so long. I think this will work well.

Now I get to figure out what border I want to add. It will be "liberated" too. Then I'll be sewing on a whole bunch of buttons!