Pin It Do It - Sewing Project: Bunting

by Bex

I'm super excited today as Mum arrives tonight and I can't wait to spend some time with her and get lots more sewing and crafting done!  I'm looking forward to showing her what I've been making recently and enjoying lots of exciting trips and things that I don't normally get to do with her.

I've been making some bunting for our Halloween party for #ODP2!  It's been so much fun and is actually a really simple sewing task.  If you're new to sewing or fancy giving it a try, I'd suggest this as a great project to start with.  And if you mess a bit up, you've only ruined one triangle.  (Although I find I often mess things up when sewing and it's generally easy to correct with a bit of unpicking!)

I went to Mandors to look for some Halloween print fabrics to use.  I know they have a huge range of printed cottons for quilting, etc and they always promote making your own Halloween costumes so I'd anticipated some cool ghost or skeleton or pumpkin prints.  Unfortunately I was rather disappointed as they had a HUGE range of Christmas prints and patterns but not a single Halloween one!  I did ask just in case I missed them in amongst all the other awesome prints but, nope.  I did find lots of Halloween coloured patterns and raided the 'Fat Quarters' section to select a few different ones which I thought were most Halloweeny and went well together.

Making the bunting is very easy, I decided to try it without following a tutorial but if you want a proper one, I found a couple via Pinterest but this one was my favourite image...

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/250794272972449060/

The most difficult part was deciding on the dimensions for my triangles.  I took a guess at a width and chose an appropriate length to make the shape I liked.  The first one my point was a little off - the difference between 3 3/4" in and 2 3/4", oops.  The first one was a little smaller than I liked so I made it longer.  

 

Once I had the measurements right, I drew them all out before pinning and cutting.

Then simply sew the triangles together with the good sides facing in.  Trim the tip off to get a better point and turn them inside out before ironing.

A brilliant array of different coloured threads, just £3.99 from Lidl!

It's so easy.  I haven't stitched them onto the ribbon yet as I was determined to find some more Halloweeny fabrics and ordered some from ebay which are all cut and pinned but waiting to be stitched before I decide on the final layout of the bunting.  When I do, I will simply pin them into the folded ribbon and sew along catching the triangles in and sealing the folded edge.

I did also buy a few Christmas fabrics while I was in Mandors as they had a great offer on where if you buy 5 fat quarters you get an extra 1 free or if you buy 10, you get 3 extra ones free.  I chose a few olive green and white ones to make Christmas bunting to go with my usual Christmas colour scheme.

I also bought a couple of other, very cute, prints as I needed to pick more free ones and I couldn't resist the elephant print!  (A rather optimistic plan to make bunting for a nursery one day!  It can always be a gift for someone else or I can sell it if the baby plan never works out.)  My original idea for a nursery was to have white furniture, I already changed the chest of drawers in the spare room to make more space and had a new layout in mind for when we turned it into a nursery.  I wanted it to have an aqua colour scheme with lots of additional bright colours (pink, purple, blue, green...) for an under the sea theme (I know elephants don't really fit with that but look how cute they are!) with lots of my colourful underwater photos on the wall.  I think the blue and one of the aqua fabrics have a print which looks to me a bit like fan corals so they fit well with that theme.  :)