A little sewing project...

In the last week I've been working on some sewing; just a change from knitting and crocheting projects. A day or so after the project was finished, a friend sent me this very appropriate meme...a good reminder how stitching can be very therapeutic.

Next week is our granddaughter's first birthday and I had decided to make her some birthday bunting that could be reused year after year. I had made similar bunting for my niece's daughter 6 years ago and it has been useful.

 For that bunting I used letters from a Creative Memories stencil, but this time I chose some rather funky lettering from the site Shiny, Happy World. I found this site by googling Fabric Alphabets and it's a very useful site for tutorials and lots of free sewing projects.

So here is the finished bunting, all 19 letters of it.

I ended up hand stitching the letters and found it to be a relaxing task. I couldn't face machining all those curves! Lol.
To finish off the bunting I sewed novelty buttons on some of the flags. Here's a collage of 3 of the letters that I decorated with a novelty button.

DsD2 loved it when we handed it over last Thursday. She said they had been planning to make bunting out of cardboard...being a non sewer, she was impressed that I'd actually made it myself!!! ( few brownie points there I think! Lol)

It's finished!

Yep! I finally finished the bunting that I was making for my great niece Lucy's 3rd birthday. It was duly wrapped up and posted off this afternoon, so that it can be used on the actual day, which is Valentine's Day.
There are lots of tutorials on the internet for making bunting, but I used one found on Grace Designs' blog. I didn't put the letters 4.5 cm apart as the pattern suggested; I made them a little closer together and had about 10 cm between words.

 I used a remnant of cream coloured sheeting for the front of the flags, and I hand stitched on the letters...

This photo was taken the other day. By yesterday each letter was decorated with a novelty button...

I used this colourful fabric for the backing of each flag and also used it to cut the strips to sew each flag to...I bought the fabric about 11 years ago, so that's not too long in the stash...it was perfect for this project though :-)

Not the best way to display it! But you can get an idea of what the overall effect is.

I used the 2nd option suggested in the tute...I placed the flag and backing, wrong sides together, stitched  around the edges, about 7mm from the edge...then used the pinking shears.

I traced the letters from Creative Memories lettering stencils, but some look a bit outlandish to me. But they were a good starting point and when I use them again, I may adapt one or two.

I wrapped up the bunting, tied it up with some pretty ribbon and wired a beaded dragonfly on to the ribbon. Lucy's middle name is the German word for dragonfly...Libelle. Then I forgot to take a photo :-( Darn!!