Its sew easy to sew bunting!

I apologise right up front for the cheesy heading!

This week it was my niece Maddison’s fourth birthday (happy birthday, beautiful girl!). I made her a personalised bunting, which was a lot of fun, and I thought you might want to make some too.

How to sew bunting

You will need:

Scraps of fabric in a variety of patterns

Fusible interfacing (iron on)

Pinking Shears + regular scissors

Cardboard for cutting out templates

Sewing machine

Iron

1. First up decide on the size of your bunting and cut out a template using a piece of card. My triangles are 11cm x 12cm (about 4.5″ x 4.7″).

2. Using the pinking shears cut out the flags. If possible cut the flags out so the top of the flag is a fold- this wasn’t always possible using fabric scraps- but if you can manage it great… if not cut two triangles per flag (so they are double sided). If you dont have pinking shears you are going to want to serge/zig zag the edges, or fold under and seam them together so they don’t fray. Pinking shears = so much easier!

3. Next cut a slightly smaller template (10cm x 11cm) for cutting your fusible interfacing, and using regular scissors cut out your interfacing – 1 triangle per flag.

4. Put an interfacing triangle inside the two pieces of fabric (right sides facing outwards) and iron to join them together. This has two benefits- it makes the flag nice and stiff so it has plenty of body and also means you don’t have to pin your flags together before you sew them (YAY!)…5. Sew along the seam of the flag close to the sheared edge.

6. If you are going to add a name or writing (happy birthday, welcome home, a new baby…) to your bunting now is the time to cut out your letters and sew them onto the flags.  I just free hand drew my letters onto felt then cut and using a glue stick stuck them to the flags before sewing in place. You can always print an alphabet off in word and cut out the letters in card to make templates.  Felt is great for lettering because it doesn’t fray.

7. Repeat for all flags…

8. I use 2.5cm (about 1 inch) wide bias binding to attach my flags to.  Iron in half lengthwise first then insert the top edge of each flag into the fold and pin in place.  Measure to ensure your flags are equal distances apart… leave at least 50cm of binding at each end of the bunting.

9. Using a BIG zig zag stitch sew the entire length of the binding catching the top of each flag in between. I discovered the beauty of using a large zig zag when making babies nappies… it makes it so much easier to catch fabric underneath… a straight stitch makes it too easy to miss!

10. Clip all loose threads, hang and enjoy!

And  if you are like me, take a zillion photos!

I hope you are having a FUN week! Jxo