Making a Banner

Decorative Fabric Banners

This is a nice and colorful way to fill in all the empty spaces of a room that need "something" while you use up all the remnants of fabrics that are almost too small to do anything with.

College dorms, first apartments, and bedrooms all make ideal subjects for this easy-to-make crafty treatment.

Approximate Time: 3 or more hours

Supplies:

• variety of fabrics
• lightweight cardboard pattern
• wide bias tape
• needle and thread or sewing machine
• scissors
• pen or chalk for marking stitching lines
• any other bits and pieces of decorations you'd like to use
• screws or nails for securing ends of bias tape to the wall or ceiling

Instructions:

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1. Select your fabric based on the colors and prints you like best. Decide on one or more shapes to make your banners and get started. Decide on the shapes you'd like to use and make a pattern using an empty cereal box. If you want more than one shape, be sure to make patterns for all so that they end up being fairly close to the same size.

2. Cut 2 pieces of the same or contrasting fabrics and sew them front sides together. You'll probably want to mark a seam line, then pin into place to make sewing faster and easier.
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   Machine or handstitch. They're easy enough to sew by hand and watch TV at the same time.
3. Leave the top of the banner open. Turn the banner to the right side, and press flat to sharpen edges.
4. Use wide bias tape to string them together and sew the top sides of each banner into the fold of the tape. Space them so that they are either touching side-by-side or with the same distance between each banner.
5. Sew the bias tape all the way from one end to the other keeping the seam straight and making sure to capture the tops of every banner in the fold. This is made much easier if you pin everything in place prior to beginning to stitch.
6. Tie the ends of the bias tape to a screw or nail in the wall or ceiling and you have instant room decor for anywhere you choose to put it.

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Source: My great-granddaughter, Bianca, who made all the banners in the pictures. She is a grad student at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh and will have her Master's in Art Management in May of this year. It's been a long hard 6 years, but she's having the time of her life right now with a first apartment. :-)

By Julia from Boca Raton, FL

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