Banners

Another weekend has come and almost gone and I have yet to update with a blog.  Since I'm in the middle of a project, I thought I would go ahead and post.


I am making a banner for a co-worker's baby shower.  They're not finding out the sex of the baby until he or she shows up, so my co-hostess and I decided to go with a jungle theme since the nursery has a nursery theme.  I have many other projects in store, which is keeping my baby fever at bay (to the delight of my husband).


Materials:

• felt (for letters, background pieces can be felt or fabric)
• sewing machine (or a fabric glue, I'll show an example for that)
• quilting ruler (or other measuring device)
• pins
• letters (mine came printed off the computer)
• ribbon or cord
• thread
• scissors
• and all of those other necessary things for sewing

The first thing I did was to cut the felt in half horizontally.

Next, I decided what font I wanted for my letters.  I typed the message for the banner and used about a 400 size to get them large enough.  I believe this time I used Kristin TLC (?).  I've also used a calligraphy font for a different banner.  The letters were cut out and pinned to the felt.  Then I cut out the letters using the paper letter as a guide.

Then, the letters were pinned and sewn to the background felt.

I had to create a pocket (if you will, I really don't know the correct word) to put the cord through.  I used my quilting ruler to make sure that all of the finished pieces would be the same size since the original pieces of felt weren't cut the same size in the factory.

The beginning of the final step is threading the cord through in order to make it a banner, instead of several pieces of felt.

Here is a sneak peak of the first word still in the pinned phase. This banner has 6 words with a total of 29 letters.  I know this project won't be finished tonight.

But I don't want to leave you without a finished project (again).  So I give you a picture of the banner I made for my husband and I's thank you card pictures from our wedding.  This banner was made using fabric for the background and ribbon as the connecting material.  I also just used fabric glue to put the letters on.  I didn't create a pocket for this and just slit the fabric towards the ends (yes, it was measured and even on each triangle) so I could thread the ribbon through.  The fabric was very thin and I tried to use some starch to give it some structure.  It didn't work as well as I'd thought it would so the ends are a little curly.

Photo taken by Lorenzfoto

What would you put on a banner?