Create a Party Banner
By Diane Ellis
A quick and inexpensive way to decorate your home for a special occasion (birthday, anniversary, graduation) or for the festive season (Christmas) is to make a hanging flag banner.
Or, you can use the same method to make your very own Tibetan Prayer Flag or Inspirational Banner.
Measurements
One string of flags measures 3m long (3 yards) and contains 12 flags. Each finished flag measures 20cm by 23cm (or 8" by 9").
In the example below, I will be making two strings of flags. Please note you can make longer strings simply by purchasing extra material and cord.
Materials
To make the 2 flag strings, you will need 6m (6 yards) of soft cord approximately 3mm in diameter (one eight of an inch).
You will also need fabric in your choice of colours. For a party, you can choose the guest's favourite colours, or just an assortment of plain fabrics (such as red, yellow, green and blue). For Christmas, use red, white and green.
A half a metre (or half a yard) of each colour will be sufficient for our purposes.
For example, if I buy 1/2 metre each of 2 colours from a roll with a width of 120cm, I will be able to get 12 individual flags from each piece of fabric (20cm wide) into 120cm – 6 flags across, and 25cm long (an extra 2cm seam allowance per flag) into 50cm – 2 flags down. A total of 12 flags.
As not much fabric is required – check out the remnant bins for bargain fabrics.
To Make
Cut out your rectangles. As we will only be hemming the top of each flag, you may want to cut the side and bottom edges using pinking shears or other fancy scissors.
For each rectangle, turn over 2cm (5/8") hem allowance on the top and machine stitch leaving enough room to loop through your cord.
To Decorate
You can really use your imagination here. Two simple methods to decorate are with fabric paint, and with iron on transfer paper (you create your own images or words on your PC).
You can use words (Happy Holidays, Ho! Ho! Ho!, Happy Birthday), stylised pictures (like clipart), or even photos.
Inspirational Banner or Tibetan Prayer Flag
Transfer some inspirational sayings from your favourite books onto your flags.
To Finish
Simply loop your cord through the hemmed tops of each flag. If you are having trouble getting the cord through, try putting a small safety pin through your cord and using this to nudge the cord through.
Diane Ellis is the owner of www.Sewing4Dummies.com. Learn more about her on our About Us page.
Free Sewing Course
We have put together a 6 part Sewing Course which shows you, step by step, how to create some fabulous items that you can use as gifts, to decorate your home, or even sell to bring in some extra cash.
To sign up for your free Sewing Course, just enter your first name and email address below, and click the button below.
Sorry - temporarily unavailable.
We value your privacy, and promise never to give or sell your information to any third party. See our detailed privacy policy here.
Support Our Site
If you have found the information on our site useful, we would like to ask you to consider a donation to help us maintain this site. Thank you!