Very lovely bunting for your home

Bunting is one of those rare craft projects that, if you’re not making miles of the stuff, can be completed in an afternoon. In amongst the piles of half-sewn quilts, abandoned scarves and partly-covered notebooks, you sometimes just want a one-hit wonder that’ll get you through a rainy afternoon. Making bunting is also incredibly easy and helps you to use up all those scraps of fabric you probably have filling up your sewing box from other projects.

There are two kinds of bunting you can make. One-sided bunting that involves cutting triangles with pinking shears and sewing them to a long strip, or two sided bunting where the triangles are sewn together and turned inside out to create bunting that looks professional and the same on both sides.

Materials

• Scraps of fabric – these can be any size, depending on how big you want to make your bunting. As a quide, around 15cm squares are a good size for smaller bunting
• One long strip of fabric/a length of ribbon/bias binding – personal preference, but this will be used to attach your bunting flags to
• Fabric scissors or pinking shears
• Pins
• Needle and thread/sewing machine
• Iron

Step one

Decide on the size you’d like your flags to be – this will depend on where the bunting will be used, of course. Are you making large flags for a tea party, medium flags to decorate your living room window or teeny flags to decorate a plant pot or use on top of a cake? When you’ve decided, cut a paper triangle to the size you’d like, (with a 1cm border for seam allowance if making double-sided bunting). Pin the triangle to your material and cut around it. Use the pinking shears if you’re making one-sided bunting to prevent fraying.

I had a bag of clothes that for one reason or another couldn’t go to charity, including some pretty floral dresses so I cut those up to make my bunting. You can use anything – old clothes, pretty tea-towels, whatever you’ve got laying around!

Step two

If you’re making one-sided bunting, congratulations, you can skip this step. Go make yourself a cuppa!

Place two triangles together, good sides facing inwards, and pin into place. Keep going until you’ve pinned all your flags. Keeping the top open, sew down the two sides of each triangle and turn them inside out. Use a pencil to poke the point out and iron the triangles flat.

Step three

If you’re making your own length of ribbon with fabric, you’ll need to cut a thin, long strip (around 5cm wide) and iron it flat. Place it print-downwards onto a table and, bit-by-bit, fold both of the long edges back on themselves by 1cm and pin into place. Iron again – you might find it easier to use straighteners to do this bit! Finally, remove the pins and fold the entire strip in half lengthways so that you have a tape that opens like a book.

If you’re using actual ribbon or bias binding, fold it in half lengthways and iron (cool iron for ribbon!)

Step four

Place the un-sewn edges of your triangles inside the fold of the ribbon, or the top edge if you’re making one-sided bunting. Pin into place, as high as you can on the ribbon. Sew along the lower edge of the ribbon, keeping all of your triangles in place. Remove your pins, and you have yourself some bunting!