Hi there – my name’s Laura (otherwise known as Lupin).
I’m completely obsessed with felt – I sell my felt brooches, headbands and masks plus felt squares, buttons and other colourful crafting supplies on my website. I also write about all my crafty antics on my blog, Bugs and Fishes. I’m delighted to have been asked to share a tutorial with you today – I hope you like it!
You just can’t beat bunting for instant English cheerfulness – perfect for parties, or for adding a fun bit of extra colour to your everyday decor. I made mine in bright summer-y colours but you could use festive colours to make a great garland for the holidays.
The felt bunting is obviously not as long lasting or hard wearing as the lovely fabric designs that are really popular at the moment, but it’s great for hanging along a wall, doorway, window or mantelpiece indoors and it’s super-easy and quick to make.
To make your bunting you’ll need:
A long piece of ric rac (or ribbon)
Matching sewing thread
Assorted sheets of felt in whatever colours you fancy
A triangle template (I’ve provided one, below)
Plus general sewing supplies – a needle, pins, scissors, etc.
1. Using your template, pins and scissors cut out lots of felt triangles – I chose bright shades, and deliberately avoided using red so the red ric rac would stand out clearly on each one.
2. One by one, pin the triangles onto your ric rac and sew them together with a simple line of stitches. I left a very small gap between the triangles, leave bigger gaps to make longer bunting. Make sure you leave an “empty” length of ric rac at each end of your triangles, to serve as ties (or sew the ends into loops if you prefer).
3. That’s it, really! Told you it was easy…
… but if you’re making the bunting for a special occasion (a birthday party or Christmas), you can add some felt letters to make a fun banner. Cut out the letters you need (you may want to draw these on paper first to get the shapes right), taking care to use contrasting colours to the triangles the letters will appear on so they’ll all stand out clearly.
Then stitch them onto the triangles, leaving a spare triangle between words – hearts make quite a cute addition as spacers, eg -heart-H-A-P-P-Y-heart-B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y-h-e-a-r-t. You could also use stars, or sew on sequins for a bit of festive sparkle. You can also cheat a bit and use some craft glue to stick your letters.
Obviously, make sure your banner has enough triangles sewn on it for all the letters you want to add! 🙂
Double click the template below to to view it full size and print out.
If you print at 100% your triangles will be the same as mine – just change the % to make it smaller or larger. Have fun!
-Lupin
Lupin, I love this! It’s so easy to make, so cute, and different than the standard paper ones we see! It could totally be used for any occasion…thanks so much! It was fun to have you here.
Mariel
What a cute idea! Im sure it’s fairly cheap to buy everything:) Thanks for sharing!
I´m a BIG Lupin fan! Love this!
And thanks for taking me to this lovely blog to!!
Patricia
Very fun. I am gonna have to try this!