DIY Buntings on a budget

As you may have already read, I threw a little dinner last night honoring my friend Meghan's 3rd Baby Boy! Welcome Nolan! We love you already!

To prepare for this event, I decided some buntings were in order!

The whole bunting trend has been around for quite some time, but I am still digging it! I think they are cute and fun (and easy enough to whip one up). So here are the materials I bought (or had on hand) that I wanted to use for the buntings:

5 squares of white felt

5 squares of gray felt

2 yards of geometric fabric (heavy weight, almost like an outdoor fabric)

Baker's twine

Hemp twine

I let the materials inspire me and got busy!

I started with the white felt. I first cut the felt squares into four equal strips. Then I cut those strips into squares. And circles out of each of the squares. (Tip: get good scissors and you can cut two pieces at a time) After I had cut a whole slew of circles, I just ran them through the sewing machine. Literally, that was it.

Here is me sewing a straight line through the circles. The thread from one circle connects to the next, and the bunting grows and grows! I did not have any special technique to do this. I just stuck one circle behind the previous circle under the sewing foot and let the feed dogs catch the material and push it through! Again, that is it! So simple!

Here is one of the finished buntings! I alternated gray and white and it turned out super cute!

I did put "on a budget" in the title of this post... Let's talk money. Each square of felt costs 35 cents and I bought 10. So that was $3.50. Plus thread. Which I already had. And 10 sheets of felt made 3 buntings. $3.50 for 3 buntings; not bad at all.

On to the fabric buntings!

I like to look for a fabric that has some lines to it. They make for really interesting buntings and they also give you some natural guidelines when you cut out your triangles. Or whatever shape you go with. Because of the great lines on this fabric, I cut all these triangles by hand. I selected points on the fabric to make the size triangle I wanted and I went for it. After I cut a whole slew of those, I began sewing.

To make these buntings a little more interesting, I wanted to incorporate the baker's twine. I ran the baker's twin along the top of my triangle where the seam was going to go. But instead of doing a straight stitch like I did on the circles, I did a zigzag stitch to trap the baker's twine in between. It was obviously more time consuming, but I say, it was also worth it.

Here is a close-up of the zigzag stitch with the baker's twine in between. On the gap in between two triangles, the tread just encases the twine. Just keep sewing even if there is no fabric directly under the needle and it will twist the tread around the twine.

Once again, here is the "on a budget" portion. I got two yards of this fabric for 80% off at Hancock Fabric's Sale for $2.86 a yard. (Total was $5.72) I had the baker's twine but you can get it off of Amazon for around 5 dollars. I made two really long buntings and have enough fabric to easily make 8 more buntings(if not even more than that!). So, 10 buntings for under $6. I'm not complaining! 

Let me just end with saying, I am not a perfectionist. I did not worry about if each triangle or circle was exactly the same. I did not worry about perfectly straight seams and perfect spacing. I was going more for a completion of a project! And you know what, imperfectly finished looks just as cute!