I decided I wanted to use an 18"x36" canvas but at the time couldn't find one locally--so I decided to just buy one online. The place I got them charged $30 (with shipping) for one canvas or $60 for five. It seemed a little ridiculous to pay that much for one when I could get five for twice as much, so I bought the five, figuring I'd use the extras for other art projects or sell them to my artistic friends. Well when they came, one of the canvases was damaged. I called the company and they said they'd send me a replacement. Well you can see where this is going...don't worry, they sent me FIVE MORE. I called them back and told them what happened, and they said I could just keep them. Now I had 8 extra canvases...so the wheels in my little head started turning...and this alphabet poster is what I ended up with.
I looked on etsy under "alphabet poster" for some layout ideas. Then I downloaded a bunch of cute free fonts from kevinandamanda.com and made the letters and colors in Inkscape (shareware version of Illustrator) so I could see exactly what it would look like. Then I printed out all the letters, traced them onto fusible paper(mostly for stability--I probably could have used fusible interfacing, but it didn't occur to me at the time), ironed them onto the different fabrics(the same ones I used in the quilts), cut them out and arranged them on the blank canvas (without ironing) and used liquid starch to make them stick. Easy. And totally cute. I actually later came up with a good idea for a border (since the wall I hung it on is the same color as the canvas) that I should have allowed room for, but alas, I didn't. No worries, I still have plenty of canvases left...I can always make another one! :)
yay for decorating!