September 15, 2011

BIRTHDAY BANNER!

Posted by Ethne~

I have been looking for quite a while for a good pattern for a pennant banner (also called a bunting which I think is a dumb name) for various décor including Halloween, Christmas and the girls’s birthday party.  It’s a great CRASH MY STASH opportunity.

In all my scouring I’ve found several options, but finally I found a pattern on Pinterest (follow the WOM boards to see what we find!) that had the easiest, fastest instructions.   

The measurements were easy, the sewing was slick, and I tweaked it myself to make it even FASTER!

The blogger called for making 5”x5” squares out of strips of scraps.  I didn’t want to go to that effort so I simply cut 5”x5” squares out of whole pieces of fabric.  Still plenty of scraps to use, but I didn’t have to sew up a bunch of strips only to then make squares.

First, cut 5”x5” squares of your chosen fabrics, as well as an equal amount of 5”x5” squares of backing fabric (I used random light fabric for this).  My loose ‘theme’ this year for the girls’ party is COLORFUL, so those are the fabrics I chose.   

A stack of scraps!
Stack 'o' color
Fronts and backs of 5"x5" squares
[A giant cupcake will be their cake with lots of colorful sprinkles (I’m going to track down the giant sprinkles online or make cream cheese mints in the right ‘jumbo sprinkle’ size.)]

Pair up a front square with a back square so they are perfectly aligned, WRONG SIDES TOGETHER.

I'm a leftie, so if you want to flip this, feel free;
the key, you are cutting from the folded top left to
the loose bottom right

Fold the 2-layer square in half with main fabric on the outside.  The fold should be on the left side, with the rectangle up and down in front of you.

With a scissor, or even better rotary cutter, cut from the top left corner (fold side) to the bottom right corner (loose end side).  The remaining large piece will be triangular.  Pin the two pieces together so they stay together through sewing.  Do this for your entire selection of fabrics.  I made 45 pennant triangles in total (that’s 45 fronts and 45 backs).

Triangle ready to sew
Sewing around the edges

In one continuous string, I sewed the two pennant sides together (still with wrong sides together) with about a ½“ seam allowance.  I didn’t bother to sew the top sides together as those will be bound at the end.  For expediency, I sewed one after another without snipping until the end.

I used pinking shears to cut around the triangular pennant sides so the sides wouldn’t fray, plus that looks fancy.  Don't cut too close to the stitching though!

A nice pinked edge
Purty huh?

So far, this project is FREE.

Next I headed over to JoAnn and purchased 2 packages of white double-fold binding which are 3 yards long each.  Each package cost $2.29.  I did not use a 40%-off coupon since I knew I would be purchasing other items for the girls’ party which will likely cost more than these binding packs.  So $4.58 invested into this birthday party decoration.

3 yards of SLICK!

Next was assembly into the banner.  I laid down the pennant triangles into a general darker-lighter-darker-lighter pattern till I liked the look and gathered them up in that order for sewing.


Easy Mac and KD were not necessarily helpful


Using regular white thread, I sewed about 1.5” of binding together to be ends to hang the banner.  Then I inserted one of the pennant triangles’ top into the binding, and continued sewing.   

Binding me a banner

When about ½” of triangle was remaining to be sewed into the binding, I added the top of the next triangle, repeating this until I had only enough binding left that I couldn’t fit another triangle in, which amounted to an inch or two.  Sew this all the way to the end of the binding and done.  Don’t forget to backstitch at the beginning and end of the binding.

Easy Mac snapped this sweet shot of me...

I had enough triangles to do two banners (ie, the two packs of 3 yard each bindings I purchased) with about 5 left over.  I’d say making 40 triangles in total would be perfect.  [Sorry, forgot to take pictures of the finished banner before I packed it away.  I'll show ya with an update when I decorate for their birthday.]

Talk about cheap and easy party décor.  I could’ve made my own binding but for me, saving the time for a mere $4.58 of pre-made binding was well worth the effort.  Two awesome results: these are THRIFTY and RE-USABLE and will work for just about every party I throw for them in the future.

1 comment:

WOM-MOMS said...

LOVE THIS ETH! Mom and I made one for Mur-Man's birthday (super hero themed) and the best thing is that I will be re-using it!

Lor!