Finished: Birthday Pennants!

In another bout of bartering, I’m planning my friend’s daughter’s 2nd birthday party in exchange for some home-cooked meals. I will pretty much do anything if someone feeds me. Cooking is not my favorite.

To begin with, I used Paperless Post to send out these cute invitations (I tweaked the invitation colors and design a little, but I didn’t want to share my friend’s information with The Whole World so this is just the website example). Pennants are so hot right now and I can see why — they are just adorable!

I continued the theme of the pennants in the decorations for the party. Since her beautiful little girl is turning 2, we can pretty much do anything cute and girly and she’ll love it.

Recently my mom gave me some home dec fabric that a friend had given to her. With the summery colors and such a bright pink, I knew it would be perfect for the decorations for this party. Also: free fabric!

I found this tutorial online to figure out the size of the pennants (7.5″ wide, 9″ tall), but after that I just winged it (this seems to be a theme in my projects). I cut out enough flags to spell HAPPY BIRTHDAY, plus an extra flag at the beginning and the end of each word: seventeen flags total. Actually, 34 flags total, a front and a back piece for each flag.

Cut, cut, cut…

To cut the letters, I completely eye-balled it. I started with a 3″ x 4″ block of fabric for each letter, and then figured out how to make a letter out of it. Honestly, I’m surprised they turned out so well for having no battle plan whatsoever. I’ve always been fairly decent in the figure-it-out-visually arena, so perhaps that was it. For example: making an “H”:

Once I had all my letters cut out, I had to figure out how to get them on the flags. At first I thought I’d machine-applique the letters to each flag, but I thought that might be messy and there would be a lot of room for mistakes. I put out a call on Twitter and my friends helped me choose an iron-on spray adhesive to apply my letters to the flags. I wish I had more outdoor space in which to do this — I did it on my kitchen island and probably gave myself a tumor inhaling the fumes of the adhesive. After spraying the backs of the letters, I let it dry and then ironed the letters onto the flags. Minus being potentially deadly, that spray adhesive is amazing.

I then sewed the two layers of flags (the front and the back piece) together, with a 1/8″ seam on each long angled edge. I didn’t do the top seam because it was going to be the edge that was part of the “string” above the flags. Technically I could have left the flags a single layer since the fabric is fairly thick, but I wanted the flags to be substantial and the stitching will help keep fraying in check. It also means that you can turn these pennants around and just have colored flags without the letters to decorate another party. Bonus!

To string the flags, I used double-fold bias tape. I sandwiched the top of the flags inside the bias tape and sewed along the open edge of the bias tape. I was about two feet from the end of the BIRTHDAY set when I ran out of pink thread! The horror! Just seconds away from the end of my project and I had to run to Walmart (it was Sunday night) to buy some cheap-o thread to finish the job.

Got back home, finished it up, and took this final photo, just as the sun was getting ready to set.

I have several other projects planned for this little birthday party, so stay tuned! It’s going to be so cute you may just throw up a little.