Money Saver Birthday Bunting

As I mentioned in the Mother’s Day post how the month of May is BUSY for my family, well part of that reason is due to my Husband and Son both celebrating their Birthdays! In support of this I’ve been thinking of a way to use up some of my fabrics but needs to be ‘manly’ hee hee. So, I have this stack of teal hessian cloths which were used at our Wedding some almost three years ago.

For our Wedding the hessian was sewn into bows with a little bunch of white fake flowers tied into the knot of the bow. Then about 16 of these bows were created to be used as the decorative feature when I walked down the aisle. In this sense I am a hoarder, because I didn’t have the heart to just throw away these bows. I’ve kept them and over the years re-purposed them. So, given that I know how much hessian cloth there is to spare, this shall make the base of my HAPPY BIRTHDAY bunting.

I’ve been wanting to do this type of bunting for some time as I believe, in the long run, it will be a terrific money saver. For the lettering I thought felt would be best in bright alternative colours. Here, let me supply a guide on how I created this.

Materials:

·       1m of hessian (colour to your own choice)

·       Felt in different colours. I used, yellow, orange, red, lime green, sky blue, navy

·       Sewing thread in colour to match hessian and felts

·       Sewing needle

·       Scissors

·       Tracing paper

·       Pen

·       Pins

·       Computer with Word or Notebook installed

·       Twine

Directions:

Hessian was my main supply of fabric. I cut it up into rectangles of approximately 20cm x 15cm. Give or take because some of the pieces just moved into their own shape after I cut them. After cutting, I zigzag stitched around the edges. I thought a rough look for the edging will give it a bit more character. Next, I folded down one of the short edges about 1.5cm and sewed it down leaving the edges unsewn (to thread through the twine later).

Now open a word or notebook page on a computer and pick the font style you would like to use for your banner. I used the standard Times New Roman font and selected the font size to be on 300 then typed individual characters for what I needed. Until I had HAPPY BIRTHDAY spelt out and traced onto paper. Then, cut out each of the characters and line them up on the felt pieces of choice, using pins to hold in place. Again, cut each out to supply the characters for the banner.

Next pin each character onto a single piece (1 character for 1 hessian rectangle) ready for hand-sewing.

After sewing, thread the needle with a long length of twine and weave it through the gaps left in the hessian rectangles to form the bunting.

Complete!

I love how my bunting worked out. So much so, I have already gathered supplies for another version. I am going to make it say “Hyvää Joulua” which translates to “Merry Christmas.” I plan for that version to be in mostly coastal shades to match my Australian Coastal Christmas theme I’ve been slowly developing more and more over the years. But still incorporates my Suomi (Finnish) roots.

Happy crafting and may you find this to also save you dollars when birthday's come around. Make a tradition to use it for everyone's birthday's. I think it is great to have traditions. Something to look back on after a while and be glad to have joined in.