Rated 4.8/5
It's finally summer! Hurray!
And how better to celebrate it than with a jamboree full of friends and loved ones.
To help make your event even more special, we've put together an easy guide to create your own bunting by up-cycling scraps of material or clothes that can no longer be worn or passed on.
We love bunting because it can be brought out year after year, becoming part of your annual celebrations in place of using disposable decorations.
Thank you to the lovely Julia from @upcyclefashion for the fantastic bunting you've made using Little Green Radicals fabric.
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What you'll need
- Fabric or very sharp scissors (plus pinking ones if you have them)
- Fun fabrics
- Card to make a template
- A pencil
- Fun fabrics
- Card to make a template
- A pencil
- String
- A little helper...
Let's get making!
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1. Iron the fabric to get flat fabric shapes. Try to keep the fabric pieces as large as possible.
Top Tip: Unpick the hems to release extra fabric!
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2. Create a triangle template and draw around it onto the fabric with a pen or pencil. Try to fit as many triangles as you can onto the fabric shape available. Be mindful of any patterns on the fabric when you are placing the template. Include seams, buttons, pockets and poppers, these features add interest to the bunting – get creative!
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3. Cut out the fabric triangles. Aim for a minimum of 20 triangles (as 2 will be stitched together and produce 10 triangles in total).
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now we stitch
4. Select two triangles and place them together right sides up (wrong sides facing each other). Stitch them together with a 1cm seam allowance. Stitch down the two longest sides of the triangle. Start at a top corner, stitch down one side to the bottom point and stitch back up the other side to the top. Don’t worry about stitching the top flat part of the triangle. This will be stitched closed onto the header tape.
Top Tip: If you're happy with just showing one side of the fabric you can skip this bit!
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5. Use the pinking shears to cut a neat zig zag finish to both of the stitched edges, but be careful - don’t cut into your stitches! Keep going until you've used up all your triangles.
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& finally, we attach them!
6. Place all the triangles on a large surface and play around with placement to design the layout. Think about any patterns or colours that work well together, and whether you could create a repeating pattern.
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7. When you are happy with the order, choose your string – we have used T-shirt yarn, but this could be any ribbon or binding, and make sure that it is long enough to fit all of the triangles (remember to leave a gap between each triangle that is slightly less that the width of each triangle).
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8. Pin the triangles in place onto the header ribbon and stitch all the triangles onto the header ribbon.
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Now you have the perfect re-used fabric bunting to bring out each year for every birthday and celebration.
Show us your creations @littlegreenradicals
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