7th May 2010
We Love Bunting!! – a great free craft project for summer
Different colours, fabrics and sizes look great – even in a small garden
I used to be very anti-bunting. It was just too twee, just a bit too try-too-hard. That was until we decided to finally tackle the enormous boxes of left-over material piled up in the corner of the studio. And that was when we realised that making your own Bunting is a brilliant way of using up all those scraps of fabric that are too good to throw away but too small to really know what to do with. And, unlike patchwork – which is the other great thing to do with lots of small bits of material bunting is really, REALLY quick and really, REALLY easy to make – look what we knocked up one afternoon! WE were actually meant to be tidying up the studio but we got distracted by all the boxes of scrap fabric and decided the Big Sort-Out could wait until another day. And you know what? Seeing the bunting fluttering in the garden is just so damn cheerful that you have to give in. We’ve put a bunting “how-to” in the free section of the website. And there are lots of supplies in the haberdashery shop. Send us your bunting pictures – we’d love to put them in our gallery.
Sara’s Garden – Summer is here at last!
First we drew a template on a regular A4 paper for big medium and small triangles: Big – 20 x 30 x 30cm; Medium-12 x 20 x 20cm; Small 10 x 15 x 15cm
Next pin and cut out as many triangles as you can. For 5 metres of medium-sized bunting you will need about 30 triangles.
Decide what you are going to attach them to. We used cotton webbing and grosgrain ribbon – which feels a little more substantial than satin ribbon. Pin each triangle to the tape/ribbon at equal distances.
Mel’s Bells
Then hand or machine sew them on. Then it’s time for embellishments. We printed out a template for letters and cut out Happy Birthday Milo – he’ll be 10 next month – from left-over felt and glued them on. We decided on Congratulations for the big floral bunting – perfect for Vicky’s wedding party on the village green in July, I reckon. They’d also look lovely with the Buttonbag Love Hearts.
Mel sewed little bells on every other one of these triangles breeze and she’s going to string it up in the garden for her brother’s 40th Birthday lunch.
Tea-Towel Bunting
I’m going to give this one to my step-mother, Elizabeth. – She’s been giving me tea-towels for Christmas every year since I left home. Maybe she’s trying to tell me something about my kitchen. Anyway, I think they look much nicer cut up and blowing in the breeze than lying (unused!) in a drawer. We also added red-ric braid to the cream tape.
We used lilac polka dot ribbon for Rose’s bunting
This bunting on lilac polka dot ribbon would look really sweet in a girl’s bedroom.