Well – there hasn’t been a whole lot of crochet going on around here these last few months and I’ve been very quiet on the social media front because lately I’ve been working on something different – bunting and a quilt! And with not a bit of crochet involved there’s been quite a steep learning curve as I’ve never made either before.

These were special top secret projects but I did share tiny glimpses on Instagram every now and then.

Both the bunting and quilt were gifts for a special person – our school administrator who retired last week after 25 years. The backbone of our school, someone with endless patience, a wealth of knowledge, a great sense of humour and a little obsession with bunting!

So, bunting first. We had a party. And thought it would be a great idea to make personalised bunting to decorate the venue and for the lovely lady to take home after.

I knew it’d have to be something special but also super simple to make as we wanted a flag for all the kids in the school – around 180! Also it was my first time making bunting so I didn’t want to mess it up.

Here’s how I made it
– Firstly I bought some pastel coloured polycotton sheets and cut out about 380 triangular flags in the different colours.

– Then I asked the teachers to get each child in their class to write their name on a bunting template.

– I traced their names from the template on to individual flags

– and embroidered over their handwriting. The older children embroidered their own flags.

– For each embroidered flag I took a plain flag and stitched it to the back to cover the wrong side of the embroidery. I left an opening of approximately 1cm at the top of the flag on each side so that I could string the flags up.

– Once the backs were sewn on I cut around the edge of the flags with pinking shears to prevent fraying.

– I threaded the flags on to bakers twine and used my sewing machine to put a tiny stitch over the twine on one side of the flag in order to hold it in place and prevent it from sliding up and down the twine.

I have to say it looked lovely on the night of the party. Obviously I didn’t take a photo of the bunting in situ because I’m a numpty and forgot! (Still a long way to go until I’m a proper blogger.)

I really enjoyed making this bunting – all 32.5 metres of it. The embroidery side of things took a while and although I did get lots of offers of help, I found the stitching so relaxing that I didn’t mind doing it at all. Once the embroidery was done it barely took any time to put it all together. I would definitely make this kind of thing again – it’d look awesome at a wedding.

I really liked the idea of embroidering over the children’s handwriting – making each flag unique. Has anyone ever made anything similar?