It was my nephew's birthday last week and I wanted to create something fun for him that he could use over and over again. I have seen buntings all over Pinterest, so I decided to whip out some sewing skills to make a fun happy birthday one! I wanted it to be fun, colorful, and not too "cutesy" so my nephew would be able to enjoy it. While shopping at an antique mall, I came across an awesome vendor that had all sorts of fabrics for sale. They had a scraps of different patterns (I counted and there were about 40 kinds) all for $4.50. I was excited; I thought I'd have to go to Hobby Lobby and buy 3 or 4 different fabrics to use (which would have worked, but not been nearly as fun). So, here's a few pictures of what I got. Seriously, I felt like I hit the jackpot!
Here they are all laid out on our full size guest bed.
I had to overlap some of them because they wouldn't all fit!
I could have made a quilt out of all of them.
(I actually only used about half of these, and had bought more.
So, I'm going to give them to my quilt-making mom to let her work her magic!)
Here's a close up. You can see that some are the same pattern, just a different color pallet.
But they all worked together great!
Since my guess work of matching colors and patterns was already done, I just chose the ones I like best for my banner. I tried to pick non-flowery ones too, since this was for my nephew and all :) Ok, so after choosing the fabric the first step was to create a pattern. I used the following pattern and just made it as big as possible while still fitting on a regular sheet of paper (I copied the image into Word and just kept making it bigger).
I didn't use the entire pattern above, just the one triangle which I cut out from computer paper first, then transferred onto tracing paper (woohoo for my drafting kit coming in handy!) and cut that out. I used both of these pieces to make sure I could cut out two triangles from each piece of fabric. If you have bigger pieces of fabric, you can come up with another way to get the most out of it. Here's a picture so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.
I wasn't worried about having all of the patterns being perfectly "straight, so I just went with wherever the pattern fit best. Next up, I pinned the pattern onto the fabric and cut out my triangles (I did 4 pieces at a time once I got the hang of it).
Next up was sewing the triangles together. You only want to sew the two long sides up (you'll sew up the top when you add the bias tape. To do this, lay two triangles wrong-sides together and sew one side together. To make this go more quickly, I just sewed them one right after another on one side, cut those apart, then sewed up the other side. Here's a picture of them all attached after I have sewn one side of each triangle.
After this, snip all of the thread connecting the triangles so you can sew the other sides. You can kind of see in these pictures that I used my fun patterns on one side and used a checked fabric for the back sides (since it won't be seen if it's hung up against something).
When I got to the end of one triangle, I back-stiched slightly, then got the next triangle right in there. I tried to make my seam as close to the edge of my fabric as possible.
Here's a pile of triangles that formed behind my sewing machine as I went! Just make sure to push them out of the way every now and then so they don't get sewn onto one another (I think I did that at least once...)
Up next, I cut as much excess fabric from the seams as I could and turned the triangles inside out. Use a pen/pencil/screwdriver to get the point nice and pointy (what else?) because once you sew up the top, it;ll be pretty much impossible to do. After you do this, you'll have some puffy triangles. So, iron them out to get them nice and flat so they'll be easier to sew!
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| Before ironing |
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| After |
I had to fold in half and iron my bias tape.
Next up, I placed my triangle inside the bias tape and sewed it up. All I did was try to get them lined up with the previous one as much as possible. In other words, I just winged this part and tried to make it as even as possible!
Here's a better picture with how close I tried to get the corners of the triangles.
I wanted them to be just touching so the spacing would be consistent.
Sewing done, I decided to sponge paint on the letters. I could have appliqued it, but this was an easier solution for me that I thought turned out well. I just placed the letters as low as possible on the triangles so that every letter would fit. To do this, take your widest letter and then put a piece of paper/cardstock at the top of the triangle to measure how far down each letter should go (See the yellow-y/brown piece of paper above my stencil? That's what I used as my guide).
I just used some white acrylic paint; lightly pressed my brush into it; dotted of the excess, then lightly dabbed the paint on my bunting.
***NOTE: If I do this again (which I plan to for my other nephew), I would probably paint before finishing of the top so I could place a piece of paper in between the two pieces of fabric because on a few of them the paint bled through the back.
Now, all you have to do is wait for the paint to dry, and you're done! Here's my finished product displayed at the party! It was so much better than just going out and buying a plastic banner from a party store!
