Monday, February 3, 2014

Happy Birthday Banner


Finally - after having a lot of these fabrics bagged for several years, I finally got around to doing this project!

It was an idea I think my mom saw someone else make for their house and told me about. I loved the idea of a durable reuseable birthday banner, and not wanting to make one every time I had a different color scheme (or a different child's favorite color birthday), I decided to go rainbow theme. 



I have mostly girls (and my one son recently had a party, so he won't be due for another 4 years...plenty of time to do something else - or nothing at all because teenager boys don't have decorated parties, right?) ;)
Plus, the next three parties (girls of course), I have in mind themes that would be perfect for rainbow.


I used my embroidery machine to applique each letter on a scrap of fabric. Then I sewed a backing/lining (right sides together and flipped of course), leaving the top open. I thought about top stitching around each of the finished rectangles (about 5"x7" finished), but I would have had to fight with clear thread or keep changing my thread or have white stitching around each rectangle and I didn't want any of those.


Then, I just sewed them all touching into a length of extra wide double fold bias tape. (It only took 1 3-yard package, with some leftover.)


I put buttonholes in the ends to make it easy to hang from whatever.


Cute, right? 
(And I used all stuff I had in my leftovers box or general supplies, like thread. So, it wasn't free, but it "felt" free!) :)

Oh, I should post my updated menu board. (Too bad I left my kids' tacky request postits up for this picture!) oops. Anyways -  I really like my new method for the menu board! I'll try to remember to do that next and not make you wait another 4 months for a post!