How To: Make Homemade Bunting.

Although most of the British celebrations of 2012 are coming to a close I know the craze of bunting was a fad most people have forgotten about already. However, when bunting kicked off I decided to make my own and now I found myself here again making some for my boyfriend and best friends for their new house.

If your any good on a sewing machine it makes it all the lot easier, Though I always seem to mess them up so I choose to hand stitch and It's not as long or hard a process as you would imagine.

So to Begin...

You will need:

10-12 20cm X 20cm pieces of patterned fabrics.

10-20 20cm X 20cm pieces of calico material or white cotton material.

2-3 metre's of white ribbon or as I like to use Curtain lining.

1 Ruler

1 Pencil

Some large thick cardboard

Scissors

An assortment of Pins

Your choice of colour thread

A needle

And an iron...

To begin:

Firstly you need to decide the size of each flag and draw and cut out an isosceles triangle template of this onto the cardboard. Mine personally measures 18cms across by 23cms in length on either side. We will name this triangle A.

You also need to make another triangle that is about 2cm bigger all the way round, so my best advice is to copy your first and just measure 2cms out from each of the corners. This is Triangle B.

Next, make sure to iron out all of your fabrics to ensure you have equal sized flags. I got always buy my fabrics in bundles and its so easy to pick up a variety of different patterns at markets and online. I got mine form Mrs Muffet on Ebay and they were absolutely perfect for this type of thing. Then using Triangle A draw around each of your patterned materials, and cut out. Then copy with Triangle B on your white cotton material. This will be the backing to your flags. Luckily it doesn't matter how messy your lines and cutting is (As long as its not extreme) as this will be covered later.

Once you have a full set of both patterns and plain triangles you need to begin pinning. Pin down both sides and a few along the top to keep the fabrics in place. Ensure that each triangle has it's drawn on side facing outwards to ensure when turning then inside-out you have the cleanest edges. 

Once all have been pinned the sewing begins. Using a simple running stitch just sew down each edge insuring to keep the top open. Once again as long as your stitches are small and close together it doesn't matter how straight your stitching in... within reason.

 And finally turn inside out and cut off any remaining fabric that is left on top.

Next Iron again, and then you need to iron your fabric for the string in half length ways to ensure a clean edge. Measure this out and decide where each flag is going to be placed in the sequence, placing them between each side of the folded fabric. I did each of my flags 2 inches apart from each other.

Pin this all together and then using another running stitch sew down the edge of the string fabric ensuring each flag is comfortably sewn in.

And... Hey Presto! Your bunting is complete, ready to brighten up any room.

I Just hope Nick, Laura and Annie like it :)