How I Made My Banner - Day One

ONE MONTH TODAY!! The wedding is in ONE MONTH!!

After lunch I sat and cut out all my letters. To give even more history, I'd had the thought of what I wanted a few weeks ago, so had drawn my plan, found my Bible verse, typed it up, put it into a nice font, printed it out, then blown it up bigger onto A3 paper. This had then sat waiting for an opportune moment to work on it.

Good Friday = bank holiday = opportune moment. (I did attend a Good Friday service, play the hymns on the piano, then go into town for a walk of witness, sing Amazing Grace in another church before lunch btw. Wasn't ignoring holy aspect of day at all)!!

Anyhow, after lunch I sat and cut out all the letters from the paper.

Then I used the paper and cut out all the letters out of black felt. I love how they look so clear against Mum's table cloth!! They pop!!

I then cut the purple butterflies out of felt that will help decorate it. I used three shades, my lavender as the base, a darker for wing detail, and then plum for the little hearts on the bottom of the wings! I'll be using ribbon for antennae and black to make the bodies. But no googly eyes!!

Then I took my fabric (it was only curtain lining but I preferred the colour)

and hemmed round it with tacking stitches.

Here's my stuff all laid out, with the trusty sewing machine in the corner! It's very frustrating to get the bobbin sorted and threaded, but once you get going, it's so quick! Here on the right is my tacking stitch!

Then I cut out green hearts which will be my leaves on the vines around the words.

You can see my butterflies now have bodies as well, and I still need to sew the ribbon!

Then I sat at the sewing machine and properly hemmed the banners. Admittedly, the machine sometimes ran away with me, and the hems aren't the straightest in the world, but when they're hanging on the wall, high up, who's going to notice?! Apart from Mum and me that is!! =D

By now, it was getting on a bit, but I was keen to get an idea as to how they'd look, and show my parents who really didn't get what I was trying to do yet, so I laid them all out on the lounge carpet to demonstrate!

And they were really impressed! So then Dad got in on it, and started making suggestions and comments, and I was very chuffed that they liked them so much!! Dad noted one banner was slightly longer than the other, so I've tucked them both under to make a space for a piece of dowling to sit to help it hang straight and down, so that's sorted that (very quick on the old sewing machine) and we decided rather than make a dowling pocket at the top to do tab tops, so I made those (on the machine) and sewed them across, four on each. I'll get a photo of that another time I guess! Then suddenly it was 10.00pm and I was tired, so I put it away for a bit, and may have another on Monday.

Aah, Monday, day of sticking! We decided that hand sewing would be rather annoying, so we're going to glue each bit on. Hope that's ok, but Dad did do a trial with leftover bits, and it looked ok. And I have to add that the verses are from Ruth 1:16.

I felt that today was soooo productive, it was brilliant to see what was a random idea, come to fruition!