Bunting for Badgers

My favorite thing ever.

BUNTING!

So it has become clear to me that "bunting" as a general art, is not that well known, and has been left behind to some extent in the world of Enid Blyton and the Famous Five. I adore bunting. It is so cute and can be used to decorate any situation. Weddings. Bedrooms. Baby showers... Um, garden partys..? Maybe not any situation I guess. Not so good at a gym or a funeral.

Anyway, my goal for the bunting was to have a cute, vintage decoration for my wedding.The photo below is a shot of our marquee with the bunting hung around the outside. Cool huh?

Our beautiful marquee.

Here is how I created my beautiful bunting...

Firstly, I must give massive credit to Josie Crafter who has a great buntingtutorial at http://www.myhomemadehappy.com/?p=54
Her instructions are super clear and made this project easier..
A great start for your bunting project, have a read through and use this with my notes below to create some fantastic bunting of your own.

After I printed off her tutorial, I read over it several times. For my triangles, I used Microsoft Word to draw a few different sizes. This ensures they are symmetrical and gives you an idea of how big you would like them. The triangle I ended up using had a base of 14 cm and a length of 25 cm.

After printing these I traced the triangle onto some manila folders (any card will work, the heavier the card the longer it will last if you are an extreme bunter).

Fabric Choice  

The theme for the wedding was blue and white, so naturally these were the shades I was after. What I found worked well was one block colour of a deep blue, one all white fabric and then 4 different blue and white patterns. I bought some fabric from Bali when I was there for a weekend, and I bought the rest of the fabric from spotlight. 

Some of my fabric choices.. I love the royal blue!

Depending on how eclectic or vintage you want the bunting, I suggest searching through the sale bins at fabric stores and checking for fabric cuts and linen from vintage stores or second hand stores. My favorite fabric was in the scrap bin at the store and cost $4 for 10 metres!

The long part... 

So here is when you need your fabric, a pen, pins, your triangle, and some close friends and a glass of wine.

Chandon. Essential crafting tool.

I found the most time efficient method for cutting out the triangles was an assembly line of sorts.

Person 1 - lie fabric pattern up on the floor. Measure 25 cm (the long length of your triangle) along each side and fold this over.Pin all along this folded zone.

This means that you can draw your triangle on and when you cut it, you cut 2 triangles.

Excellent scissor skills Liz. Some triangles that have been cut from the royal blue are pinned and sitting on the table.

After Friend 1 (we will call her, Liz) has made this fold and pinned it, she can trace the triangle shapes, one after the other along the fold so that you get fabric with 10 or more triangles lined up. 

Tracey having a wedding magazine break in between drawing triangles.

Friend 2 (lets call her Tracey) can cut out the triangles, keeping the pairs pinned together to make sewing easier later.

This is where you can be sitting at the sewing machine making the pennants for your bunting.

Take the 2 triangles (which should be pinned together, patterns facing inwards),and sew along the first long edge, and turn it to sew the other side. If you are doing many at a time you can just grab the next one and keep going. 

Triangles in stitching mode.

Friend 3 (in this story her name is Iris) can collect the triangles and cut along the point of the triangle, so that when you fold them inside out, the point is pronounced rather than kind of squashed. Friend 3 can also do the turning inside out. I suggest using a pointy thing (we used kebab sticks and cuticle pushers) to push the point of the pennant out so you get a nice triangle, again rather than having a squishy, ugly end. 

Some beautiful, finished pennants. These are all ready to be pinned.

If you have more than 3 friends, then good on you! This is lucky in general and can make this process easier. 

Friend 4 is vital. Friend 4 needs to be the pourer of wines, DJ, snack preparer and all round transporter between steps.

Now, don't be fooled. This took us many Saturday afternoons, the last of which ended in Friends 1 and 2 ironing the pennants with the card templates inside to keep their shape, while Friend 3 pinned the pennants into the bias. Keep an inch spacer between each flag. I cut an inch wide piece of card to slip in between the flags. Friend 4 will need to be happy to use the sewing machine ( so not too drunk) and stitch the pennants in.

Bias tape: I suggest using plain white bias tape - buy in bulk - I paid way too much for a few metres at a fabric store, then bought 50 m online for $10.

I suggest planning a few craft days with your friends, stocking up on Chandon and brie. We had so much fun on our 'bunting and champagne dates", just down sip and stitch for too long. This could be hazardous. 

We ended up making nearly 60 metres of bunting, which coincidentally ended up being nearly the exact outside measurement of our marquee - perfect. This was a long term project, which I could not have down without the help of my beautiful friends. I have kept it for future parties, and maybe a baby badger room in the future. 

This was one of the most satisfying and beautiful projects from my wedding. It looked amazing when it was up. I hope these notes have helped your creations, I definitely recommend making some bunting!

Carey Conn Photography, http://careyconn.co.nz/