Double Sided Bunting Tutorial for TomKat Studio and Giveaway

As if winning tickets to Oprah's after Oscar Party wasn't enough excitement for me this week, I've also been asked to do a Valentine's Bunting for my friends at TomKat Studio.  They are doing an awesome series on Valentine's decorations for the 14 days leading up to Valentine's Day, and lucky me I get to participate (my link will be up on Tuesday).  So if you're here for the first time from TomKat, welcome!  The method of bunting making that I'm about to share with you was thought up by my beautiful, creative sister Becky and I share this with you with her blessing.  So pull out your pinking shears and let's get started!

First off I always like to show an "end result" picture with my tutorials, this will give you some of that satisfying instant gratification and hopefully keep your interest for the full tutorial (and for those of you going, "what the heck is a bunting?  Is it something you eat?" Now you'll know).  It's really easy, I promise.  In fact this bunting method can be done completely without a sewing machine, I'll tell you how when we get to that step.   But as always if you have any questions on anything I do just let me know and I'll be happy to help out.

Here she is, what do you think?  I think she's won my heart.  I'll show you her with her Valentine's accessories after I give you the full how-to.  Here we go.

First off you'll need a few supplies.  To make this bunting I picked out 5 fabrics that I thought fell into the Valentine's Day colors category and coordinated well with each other.  Obviously there are actual Valentine's Day fabrics out there that you could use as well, but I tend to stick to the essence of the holiday and choose not to hit you over the head with hearts and cupids.  But if that's more your style then go with it.  The nice thing about just using a holiday's colors is that you could easily use this bunting for girl birthday parties, or baby and bridal showers as well.  That's me, always trying to be versatile.

I bought 1/4 yard of each of my five fabric choices.  This amount of fabric could easily make two buntings and if you split it with a friend then they'd be half the price too.

Then I picked out some decorative trim that coordinated with my fabric choices.  I used this pom-pomish trim along with a polka-dot ribbon.  But you could easily use just the ribbon, or ric-rac is always fun too.  I bought two yards of each of these trims, but probably cold have gotten away with 1 1/2 yards.  It just depends how long you want your end result to be.

Now you'll need a triangle template.  I just used my ruler to draw a triangle the size I wanted on a piece of cardboard and then cut it out.  I think you can buy actual plastic templates at the craft store, but there's really no need to unless you plan on mass producing these.

Now the bunting I'm showing you is double-sided, so I also picked up some of this Heat n Bond (I bought it at Wal-Mart) or you could use Wonder-Under if you can find it.  You don't have to make your bunting double sided, I just think that you'll end up with a much nicer finished product if you do.  Either way it'll be cute.

Okay now you've got your supplies and you're ready to go, so let's get started.  You'll need your iron and ironing board for this, so make sure it's plugged in and hot.

1.  Take your first fabric, lay it on your ironing board and fit a piece of your heat and bond onto the back side.  I cut my piece 9 1/2 inches X 17 inches.  This MUST BE SMALLER THAN YOUR PIECE OF FABRIC or you'll heat and bond a lot of sticky goo onto your ironing board and nobody wants that.
2.  Adhere your heat and bond onto your fabric with your iron.
3.  Let this cool, and then peel the paper backing off of your fabric leaving a layer of the heat and bond on your fabric.
4.  Now fold your fabric back onto itself, iron again,  and you'll have a nice rectangle of fabric that is double sided.
5.  Take this fabric, your cardboard triangle, and pull out your rotary mat and cutter fitted with a pinking blade.  If you don't have one of these (you should go buy one) you can use fabric scissors or pinking shears as well. Use your plastic ruler to give yourself a nice edge and cut out double sided triangles.  You can lay these back to back and get about 4-5 triangles out of your fabric.

6. and 7.  Repeat this process until  you have plenty of triangles.
8.  Now repeat this entire process with all of your different fabric choices.

9.  Now that you've gotten all of your triangles cut, line them up in the order you want them to be on your bunting.
10.  Stack your triangles up and get ready to sew.  But wait!  Here's where you could make this an entirely no-sew project.  If you don't have a sewing machine, or are deathly afraid of the one sitting in your closet because you don't know how to re-thread the bobbin (that was me once too), just grab some craft glue or your glue gun and glue your triangles onto your trim.  But for the rest of my tutorial's sake I'm going to show you how I finished mine on my sewing machine :)
11.  Before you start make a loop out of your trim, sew this together and you'll have an easy way to hang your bunting when it's done.
12.  Now take your first decorative trim and sew your triangles next to each other onto the trim.  I use my zig zag stitch to do this.
13.  Keep going until you've got all the triangles you want on your trim.
14.  Now finish your bunting up with a ribbon accent.  I used a thick ribbon folded in half to give my bunting a finished look on the front and back.

You're done!  That was really easy, right?  Another fun way to do a double sided bunting is to put one holiday on the front, and one on the back.  I have a Halloween and Thanksgiving one that I can just turn over between holidays.  Clever, I know.

Here she is all accessorized and ready for her close-up.  What do you think?  Want to know the best part about this?  I made two of these buntings exactly the same, and I'm ready to give one of them to you!

GIVEAWAY!  FOLLOW THE RULES BELOW TO ENTER.

All you have to do to enter is become a follower of my blog in the upper right side, or if you're already a follower just let me know that.  Then leave a comment in the comment section below along with a way to contact you if you win.  I'll choose a winner by Thursday the 10th so that I can get this in the mail and make sure it gets to you before Valentine's Day.