festive fabric bunting tutorial

With the start of February I said goodbye to the newest holiday crafty addition- a winter bunting for the front of our house.  A few weeks before Christmas I had the vision of something to spruce up the front of our house for not just Christmas, but the whole winter season.  I came up with the idea to do a bunting out of winter colors (for me I envision blues, white, and silver when I think of winter) and attach a strand of white lights to it.  Festive during both the day and night.  Perfect. 


With a pair of pinking shears, some scrap fabrics in my winter colors, and a few packs of bias tape, this project worked up quickly.    

There are tons of tutorials out there for buntings if you want a visual step by step process as well as many different styles and techniques to choose from.  I chose to keep my bunting as simple and quick as possible for two reasons.  First, I needed to be able to make the whole thing in less than a couple of hours while the boys were at Grammie's house.  I know myself too well, and know that these days if a project like this doesn't get done in those few precious hours, it's not getting done.  Secondly, I planned on having this bunting hanging outside for two months each year.  The sun is notorious for bleaching out fabric, so I didn't want to put a lot of time into something that I would possibly have to replace in just a few years due to the beating it would be taking hanging on my front porch. 

Here's what I did in a down and dirty tutorial... like I mentioned above, this is a really easy project but if you need more of a visual step by step tutorial do a quick search for "fabric bunting tutorial" on the web :)

Fabric Bunting Tutorial
Supplies:
various fabrics (this is a great scrap project)
pinking shears
scissors
bias tape
sewing machine and thread

Cut out your flags using your pinking shears to cut the side of the triangle and your regular scissors to cut the top of the triangle (the part that will be attached to the bias tape).  To do this I cut out a triangle shape out of paper and used this as a rough pattern. 

Determine how much bias tape you need.  I measured the length of our porch and then added a few feet so that I could have the strand arc down a bit in the middle (see picture above).  If you want an exact length you could take a ball of yarn and string it across wherever you plan on hanging you bunting, making sure to create the arc you would like.  Then measure the yarn.  Stitch together the ends of your bias tape if you need to piece together sections to get the right length (make sure you open the fold before stitching the ends together). 

Place your flags inside the fold of the bias tape, with the scissor cut edge enclosed in the bias tape.  I'm an experienced sewer so I opted to insert them as I sewed, eliminating the need for pinning.  I just sewed and measured as I went.  But you can pin each flag if you're more comfortable doing it that way.  I spaced my flags about every ten inches or so.  To determine how far apart I wanted the flags I laid out my bias tape on the floor and played around with the placement of the flags until I was happy. 

Stitch up your bias tape enclosed flags using a straight stitch, stitching as closely to the open edge of the bias tape as possible while still catching all layers.  A word of caution if buying store bought bias tape- sometimes it's not a perfect fold so one side of the fold is a bit longer than the other.  Just be aware of that while stitching to make sure you are catching all layers. 

To attach the string of lights, I laid my completed bunting out on the floor and stretched my strand of lights along it.  Every few flags I used a piece of matching yarn and tied the light strand to the bias tape to keep everything in place. 

Enjoy!