Holidays: January 2011 Archives
Bunting: A lightweight cloth material often used for flags and festive decorations
In honor of St. Valentine's Day (or Single's Awareness Day, as I have
seen it referred to), I have whipped up a most festive bunting to celebrate
love. My history of Valentine's Day has always made it more of a celebration
than an anxiety-riddled day of examining single life. My mom would always give
up little gifts and cards before we left for school. There was also the huge
PAR-TAY in grade school that equated Valentine's day with cute cards, lots of
candy and my favorite color at the time, Pink. It wasn't until Middle School
and High School that Valentine's became the black mark on the calendar. I
decided shortly after a bad break-up that I wasn't going to celebrate it any
more. I held to that all through my courtship with my husband and since.
However, now with a daughter of my own, I long to recreate the joys of my
childhood and that especially includes Valentine's day the way Mom taught me.
This project started with an idea: bunting. It is such a favorite in the
craft world, I think, for 2 reasons: insanely customizable, relatively quick.
My bunting would be, of course, made of valentine-y colors (pink, red, white)
but also some new colors to spice it up. As usually happens as I was assembling
my supplies (I should not that I wanted this project to use up scrapes and remnants
from other projects) I found out that I was depressingly low on ribbon. I had
no pink, red or white ribbon at all! I was too ashamed of this circumstance to
even show my head in public. To serve as a ribbon to hold the bunting together,
I decided to take strips of my chosen fabric and braid them up. To determine
how long I would need it, I cut out my flags (roughly 6 in. W by 8 in. H) and arranged
them. I then measured across the top and added a little extra for hanging. To
make the braid, I cut strips about 2 in. wide (if you just snip into the
fabric, you can rip it the rest of the way down and it will be perfectly on the
grain). I then knotted 3 together and braided. When one strip was about to run
out, I would knot it together with another. I continued to my desired length, knotted
and trimmed the ends. I then cut ½ in. by 4 in. strips and stitched them to the
top of the flags and tied the flags onto the braided fabric.
I cut out the letters from various colors of felt and glued them in
place. Too late I realized I could have used my Cricut for this. You could also
use a blanket stitch to secure the letters or Heat n Bond. I added big hearts
at either end because it just felt right.
Materials needed:
½ yd of quilting cotton in various colors (½ yd makes 3 flags)
Three ½ yds of quilting
cotton in various colors for the braid
3 sheets of 9
x 12 in. felt for letters
