Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Fabric buntings

I love buntings.  They look adorable pretty much anywhere:  weddings, parties, in your baby's room.  So far, I've made two, and both have been signage for our tables.




The first I made for our jellykoe booth after seeing so many at craft shows.  I used leftover scraps for the pennant flags and felt for the letters.  We've gotten so many compliments on it, too!












So for the wedding show I've got coming up (This Ain't Your Mama's Wedding Show), I thought I needed to make one for my table.  It came out really cute!  Again, I used extra fabric I had laying around, so this cost me nothing.  



Here's a brief tutorial on how to make one if you want to try it out.  It's really simple, and only took about an hour to make.  P.S. I'm a lazy seamstress on my personal projects, so I did a lot of freehanding and guesstimating based on what I thought looked good.

Materials:
Fabric, felt, ribbon

First I measured the table I was hanging it on.  It's a 4 ft table, so 48".  I needed 9 letters and two end pieces, so I divided 48 by 11 to get 4.3.  That's how wide the finished triangles should be.  Since I cut two pieces and sew them, I cut my triangles 4.5" wide, so that they would be 4" wide when finished.
*If you're using felt as the backdrop, you really only need to cut one piece, but I didn't want my fabric to fray, so I had to finish the edges.

I freehanded the letters on felt, using the triangle as a template to make sure they would fit inside once it was sewn up.

Sew the triangles with a 1/4" seam, clip, turn, and iron.

Sew on the letters.  On the jellykoe bunting, I used contrasting thread colors, which made it pop against the busy background.  On the YesterEra bunting, I used ivory thread since the background was solid.

Sew your triangles to a length of ribbon.  I left a bit extra on each end.  You can fold the ribbon down to enclose the tops of the flags, but it's a personal choice.
DONE!

NO SEW VERSION:
Use felt background, or thick fabric and fray check to keep your edges neat.  Glue letters on triangles.  Glue tops of triangles to length of ribbon.  DONE.

I think for craft shows, people appreciate the effort of handmade signage, and of course, it's cheaper than buying a banner.  Next I want to make some paper buntings to string all over the place!