Those of you who’ve followed here for a while might be familiar with my book, Quilt Talk®. It’s a book of letter patterns for a full paper-pieced alphabet, with a dozen projects included.

Cover image of the Quilt Talk book features three buckets with the patchwork words of "Stuff," "Oh Scrap" and "Full of Knit" next to a sewing machine.

Word quilts are making a resurgence, and I want to tell you how this book can help you make them, whether you use its alphabet or one of the many other alphabets that are available in our quilty world.*

First of all, Quilt Talk® has a FULL alphabet: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuation, special characters (all the ones above the numbers on your keyboard) and all the accent characters for Spanish and French languages.

It includes a chapter on how I do paper-piecing without using special rulers or tools, and how I pre-cut for paper-pieced letters to minimize fabric waste. I’ve had a lot of people write me about how easy my paper-piecing instructions are to follow, especially for paper-piecing newbies!

But the most useful parts of the book are probably the sections on how to SIZE your words and space your letters. Most letter patterns come in sizes that quickly get big, and if you want to say more than a few words you’re likely to end up with an unnecessarily huge quilt. This book covers the easy math for making the words come out the size YOU want them to be. And here’s the bonus… these concepts can be adapted to ANY alphabet patterns.

The book also has a great section on how to choose your fabric values and pattern textures for maximum impact. If you’re going to take the time to make a word quilt, let’s make sure it can be easily read!

So even if you’ve found another alphabet you want to try, Quilt Talk® will help you make the best use of it!

For a more detailed description of what the book covers, read here.

*And here’s a shout out to a few other alphabets available: