I love bunting!
Adding bunting to a venue, turns a party into an event! Transforming rooms, venues and every caravan needs bunting! Click here to read all about our 1969 Bluebird Caravan.
I would have it all over house if I had time to make that much!
If your looking to rent some bunting for your event, then I highly recommended Beautiful Bunting. We used one of their cream sets for our mini people christening and it made such a huge impact at the venue!
I also love their advice page on how to hang your bunting, click here to see their tips.
What look are you going for?
Before making your bunting, first you need to work out how much you need to make and what style you like. By what style, I mean, is do you like each flag to be close together or do you like space in between?
The first photo (inside our caravan) shows large flags, with about the same size as the flag gap in between. The second photo (outside our caravan) shows smaller flags with no gap.
It really is up to you, gaps can help you save on fabric, and give a bigger impact. Do make sure the gap is the same, or it will lose its impact.
There are many different styles you can pick from. How big the flag is, is up to you! But make sure you use the same template for each flag, often you will get slight changes in size. This is ok, over large areas, but up close will bug you!
Now the main three ways I make my flags are:
2 sides of fabric, sewn together and then turned inside out and ironed
2 sides of fabric, sewn together (sometimes with a pretty stitch as showing) then the edges cut with pinking shears
1 side of fabric
On the most part its the 1st one, if am pushed for time then 2nd. I hardly ever do the 3rd option. Mostly due to how it hangs, one side of fabric would be very light, it can work well if adding detail onto it or going for a thin look. If not then thick fabrics would only need one side, this would only work if the pattern is on both sides or its a plain fabric!
Once you have worked out what look you are going for, gap or no gap, stitching showing or not showing...then you can work out how much fabric you need. What I love about bunting, is you can add to it later, or pull out a few (ok, carefully unpick) flags and change them. This is what am currently doing with Daisy's bunting. We have changed her colours, so her bunting needs to be changed too!
So how much fabric do you need? Well the wonderful thing about bunting is its not all that much fabric! Depending on the size of flag you want and how far you are covering, you can get a lot out of a small amount of fabric.
Say you are making some for your caravan or a room. If you have made some pillows or curtains, save your off cuts. Click here for my easy way to make pillows covers. You can make a few flags out of the off cuts, pad out with a plain fabric and then mix/spread out the pattern flags. Big impact and not to much fabric! Please note though that huge gaps, will not look as good - It helps to lay out your flags with gaps first and see what you think!
I work out how many flags I want in a meter of bunting, so it could be 3 large flags or 7 small flags etc. Once you have how many flags in a meter, you can work out how many flags in total you need to make.
A quick drawing to show you what I mean, drawing it out will help you if you are adding letters too!
You can really play with the shape of your flags too, thin and long, short and wide. You can mix sizes up to short then long, etc.
These drawings just represent just one meter, the pattern you go for will be repeated over each meter of fabric.
Here are some ideas to help you with colour and placement. I try not to go over 3 colours, that's just me! I have gone up to 3 plain colours and 1 patterned fabric but not very often.
So top is just a plan, 1, 2 & 3 colour, then repeat, 1, 2 & 3 all the way through your bunting line. Next is just alternate plan colour and pattern. Then one long flag, next to a short. With this pattern way, I tend to stick to 2 colours, or 1 patterned and 1 plain. If there was going to be a patterned fabric that would be the smaller flag.
This is just how I do it and you can do it how ever you wish!
While we are talking about what ever you wish......Who said they had to be flag shaped!
Now you have worked out the shape of your flags, and how many you want in a meter! Fabrics.....So back to where we started, are you going to make these flags double sided? Say you went for 3 flags in a meter, and two sided. You don't need to buy a whole meter of fabric! Often fabric by a meter is folded and you would end up with a lot of fabric left over. Now don't fall into my trap of not ordering much and then it gets discontinued :( So plan ahead! If you want to save some pennies, plain fabric on the most part is cheaper, so order a 3rd of your over all fabric in patterned and the rest in plain. Its best to start by making up to about 3 meters and seeing how you find it. What shape you like and how much fabric that used.
For each of our children I wanted to make them a set of bunting. I think making the first set, with the help of my mother, was enough to put me off making bunting for life! It has his name hand stitched on it, along with little sayings.
I hadn't finished making the windbreaker above so I used his bunting. Having such a huge amount has come in very handy! From his Christening, being lent to friends, the above beach party and to wrap around Daisy below.
To give you an idea of how long this bunting is, our Daisy is 14.5 foot long and it wraps all the way around. So something crazy like 40 foot long!! Everyone needs to have some bunting in their life, its so fun and satisfying to make! If you have never made anything before, bunting is a really good place to start. It can be hand sewn, machined or even knitted! Made from old sheets, clothes, anything.
My favorite thing to make as a gift, is bunting. Here is some I made, in my friends beautiful original 1970's caravan. (The fabric was a gift from a friend and I made the bunting.) There is something about adding bunting which just makes a space so much more special.
Here is the same bunting, used on his amazing little sprite! I love that you can add, take away, pack up and re-use your bunting for so many things!
So now you have your fabric, and pattern, what next!
Whats it going to attach to? From ribbon, bias binding, lace, even to string!
My favorite is bias binding. I love how it encloses the top of the flag in it. You can pick a plain colour or even a bright in your face bias binding colour, or patterned to really show off! (You can even make your own!)
This amazing set was made by a lovely friend of mine, and it shows you how you can get such a different look! Here she has encased the whole flag in the binding and it looks amazing! It was very nice of her to let me use the photo, I think she is selling this set too so click here for a link to Retro Caravan Club's Facebook group.
Its easy to know how much to order, how many meters are you making, is how many meters of it you will need. Allow extra at each end to tie your bunting up! You can also make little matching ties, to hold your bunting in place.
Now you have your design/layout, fabric, and binding. All you need to do is put it together.
The best way is to make all your flags first. This means you can check layout too.
Make sure you use a template, to keep each flag the same size. I just cut this out on plain paper. You can pin this template to the fabric to cut or cut many at once. Please note, if you have a patterned fabric, is this pattern directional? If so you need to keep in mind how it will look when hanging. You can see in the above photo on the left is the plain cut out, and on the right is where the 2 sides have been sewn and then the edges cut with pinking shears. (The top is left as it will be enclosed with the binding.) Please note, make sure the top edge is perfectly straight or it will make your life harder when attaching the binding!
If you are going to add any applique or hand sewn details, do this before enclosing the two edges which will be on show. This will mean that your workings sewing it on will not be on show but hidden by the other side of fabric. I love that you can really make your bunting your own by adding detail!
Once you have made all your flags, lay them out how you want them to look when hanging. This bit is fun, changing around the different flags to see what you like best.
Once you have made all your flags, and worked out the order. Pile them up in that same order, with the first flag on top and the last flag on the bottom. Keep them in this order when you press or iron them. To make really good looking bunting, make sure you iron it. It will seal the stitches but also make your bunting look even more fab! I do not iron very much, my husband jokes that if he sees me getting out the iron he knows am making bunting!
When you have your pile of flags ready, and you are adding the binding by machine. You need to first sew together the binding which will be your extra before the flags to tie on your finished bunting. You don't need to go crazy with this amount I would say a max of 3 flags of extra.
When you run your binding through your machine, make sure you have folded over the binding so the opening is facing away from your machine. This means you can feed in the flags with ease.
When I first started making bunting I pinned each flag in place but now I just run it through the machine, making sure to leave the same gap between each flag. It really helps to have something the same size to check each gap before adding in the next flag!
Am going to add in a video of running the bunting through the machine.
Everyone needs some bunting in their life! I will add some videos as soon and some more action shots (Its very late at night here and am off to bed!)
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