Vintage Bunting for 75cents!

Bunting is such a "buzz" item at the moment.

There are a lot of good things to be said for decorations that can be used again and again.

They can be made from scraps and cost next to nothing.

I have decided that my stall at the growers market needed some flagging and have been giving thought to bunting for some time now.

Last week while in St Marys on THE bus trip I found an op shop.

I found a whole shopping bag of scrap fabric and some braid and ric rac and it only cost me $1!

Literally some of the pieces are scraps but I sewed some together to get the pieces I needed for my little flags.

I am sooo not going to tell you how to make bunting...there are plenty of tutorials on the web and there are the lazy one sided cut with pinking shears versions or the make little triangles and turn them out versions.

Which ever suits your purpose....

What I wanted to share that the other tutorials don't cover in one place is some quick tricks to neater, faster job. Yes, making them is easy, but like anything handmade or worth doing it takes time. Think of it as an investment though as you will have them for ages and all occasions.

So make the template from some stiff sturdy card. There is no magic size, just the triangle shape and size of your choice, remembering the seam allowance.

Once you have cut all your triangles, sew them along one long side.

Sew them all without stopping and cutting, just keep feeding them in. When you finish the last one they can all be clipped apart. Now go down the other long side in the same way. So you are in production line mode.

This link has a tutorial with great photos and shows how to do this method.

Before turning them snip the excess fabric from the ends so you can get a nice neat point.

A few snips save you some time and struggle.

With the tips of your scissors or a chopstick (etc) tease the point out. Don't go shoving or you'll damage the seaming. Just feel it to the end till its extended out.

Some fine tuning at the end may be necessary to get a fine point. Gently pull out any further excess.

Before they are finally pressed they look a bit like coronets so grab your sturdy cardboard template again and push it firmly into your lovely pointy triangle and iron.

This will give you a good finished shape in really quick time.

This will give you a beautiful finish.

So that took me about three hours to make 27 pennants, remembering though that I was doing a bit of cutting and shutting with the smaller fabric pieces in order to get a decent run of triangles out of it.

I estimate that given the ammount of fabric I used from the bag, it has cost me 25cents. Also included in the bag was 6metres of brand new in the packet bias binding which I figure has to be half the bag value at least, so say another 50cents.

All up.....75 cents for a string of bunting!!!

I plan to finish it with the bias binding on Tuesday so perhaps photos on Wednesday.