Happy Monday, friends! What I thought was going to be a warm weekend for playing outside ended up to be chillier than expected. We were able to wrap up a few home projects instead and catch up on some needed sleep.
If you have followed my blog for any length of time, you may have noticed that I take joy in decorating our home. Peter and I both value changing it up around here to meet our needs better and reflect our family as much as we can.
I started this bunting a while back. Life around here has been a bit difficult for me, but I think we finally had a break through with our one year old and his sleeping habits. Projects had to be put aside for a bit while my heart learned about selflessness and the joys of mommy-hood even on the hard days. These children…they are a blessing, and I understand now how refining of a task it is to shepherd and train children.
Case has a big blank wall in his bedroom. Last year I took a variety of pictures of his grandfather’s dairy cows, his other grandpa’s tractors, and some pictures of him and his brother that I was planning to have turned into canvases. That project is still in progress.
I am a sucker for bunting and garlands of many shapes and sizes, and this will hang right above those large pictures on what is currently a big blank wall. This is the first time I have done this style with fabric triangles. There may be some better methods out there, but this is what worked for me.
Here is what worked best for me!
1. Find some of your favorite fabric. This project is great for scraps of fabric. It can be a variety of colors or sizes of scraps.
2. Cut your fabric into five inch strips. The size of strips you cut determine the size of triangles you end up with. Feel free to vary as you see fit. I used five inch strips for my triangles.
3. Using a triangle ruler, cut your strips of fabric into triangles. If you don’t have a triangle ruler at home, feel free to cut a template out of some thick card stock or card board. If you plan on sewing lots of triangles, I recommend investing in the ruler. It’s helpful.
The length of your bunting will determine how many triangles you need. I wanted a bunting for a ten foot wall. I ended up needing 32 pennants. Since two triangles are needed for each pennant, I cut 64 triangles.
4. Take two triangles and place them right sides together. That means the good sides of the fabric should be sandwiched on the inside.
Using a quarter of an inch seam allowance, sew down the sides of the triangle. I back stitched at the point of the triangle.
5. Since I wanted my points as sharp and unbunched as I could get them, I trimmed down the seam allowance. This made for cleaner points and edges on my triangles once I turned them right side out.
6. Turn your triangle right side out. Using something like a mechanical pencil or wooden skewer, push out the point as best as you can without pushing the pencil right through the seam.
I also ironed my triangles at this point.
7. Your triangles are done, and now we need to make the ‘string’ for hanging the bunting. Cut one inch strips of fabric. If you want 15 feet of bunting, cut 15 feet of one inch strips. If you only want 10 feet, you only need 10 feet of one inch strips.
8. Sew your one inch strips together as applicable and iron the seams out. This will reduce some thickness when your are sewing everything together.
9. Here is the finicky part! Once you have your long one inch strip of fabric. Iron it all in half. Iron it wrong sides together. In other words, you want the nice side of the fabric on the outside.
10. Now iron each side again so it folds into the middle crease. See the pictures below.
It’s a bit of a finicky process, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not bad. Here’s another picture. It’s hard to see the crease down the middle in this picture, but it is still here. You essentially have all finished edges now.
11. Trim the little points off the triangles.
See the little corners peeking out of the top of the triangle below?
Those need to go.
12. Pin your triangles inside the the crease your created with your one inch strip of fabric.
See how they fit right in there. All your edges are already finished too.
13. Sew right down the strip of fabric. Go slow ensuring your triangles stay tucked in and sandwiched between both sides.
You can stop and go as you please. You can see above that I stopped after three triangles. Just be sure to back stick a few times. Then keep going from where you left off.
Since there are lots of layers of fabric to sew through as you complete this project, I recommend starting with a sharp needle. And go slow if you hear your machine get a bit bogged down.
Be sure to let me know if you try it out! This was a fairly quick project and fun for my little three year old’s room. He’s excited to hang up the triangles. 🙂