Making bunting - flags and shapes

In my last post I showed you some bunting I had made for my son to match his robot themed room so I thought I should talk more about it.

I don't really want to let the cat out of the bag (pardon the pun) but bunting is so simple to make - I was actually surprised at how quick it is to put together and it really doesn't use a lot of fabric either.

My absolute favourite bunting tutorial is here and is put together by Bride De Force. You really must watch the video if you ever want to make bunting it's all of a total of 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

As in the tutorial I pick three pieces of complementary fabric and attach nine flags to a piece of bias binding I buy from the local craft shop. Using this method my bunting is approximately three metres long and each flag measures 18cm across with an 18cm drop.

I have some for sale on my Facebook page here if you are interested.

So what is bunting used for. Basically to decorate a room. I have seen it traditionally in children's bedrooms but it is now popular at children's parties and even weddings. My last customer used it to decorate her daughters toy room.

On another note I absolutely adored the bunting made by Willow Tree Designs. Instead of the traditional flag bunting she makes various shapes and inspired me to make my own. Here are some examples of the shape bunting I made.

To make my shaped bunting I simply made a template, fused some heat and bond onto some fabric and hand cut the shapes out (this was the long tedious bit). They are double sided and fused together. I used the automatic button hole stitch on my sewing machine to make a button hole at the top of each shape and threaded some grosgrain ribbon through.

I then finished the ribbon off with some gold eyelets for easy hanging. The shaped bunting was three metres in length with twelve shapes in total. To get into the festive season I also made some Christmas trees.