Bunting For A Big Event!

"The Girls" are getting ready to put on a quilt show.  They are making bunting for decorative crowd control.  I am helping them out.  I have learned a new quick way to make bunting!  What? Yet another quick way?  Absolutely!

You just find a strip of fabric, possibly in your fabric stash or your neighbors' fabric stash, and press one, long edge, over to the back.  Use the zig-zag stitch on your sewing machine (or your neighbors').  Then you cut the shape into the long side opposite the side you zig-zagged.

The girls and I are doing a bit of a mash-up style, so I used a wider strip of the dark and cut scallops, and it is sewed to the narrower orange.  I am just going to cut out triangles on the orange-pink-fruit punch colored fabric.

That is all there is to it.  You can add more sections, or just make one really long section.  Then sew a little more fabric on each end, or a ribbon, or shoestring, so you have something to tie up both ends of your bunting.

This was just a test-hang, so you can get the idea.  It is really going to be incorporated with many more sections, so it goes around a display to keep people back a couple feet.  My good friends are, also, making sections and they will all be sewed to one another to make a really long bunting.  

Another great way to make bunting, is to cut different fabric prints to make a random splash of color, and just sew them to long strips of selvage edge.  Fabric comes on bolts and the two long edges are the selvedge edges.  It is what keeps the fabric from unraveling.  It is a tighter weave than the rest of the fabric and usually people trim it off and throw it out, but it is great to sew triangles or squares onto it to make bunting.  These buntings are raw edge, so they are quick and easy to make!

In June 2012, I posted instructions for making three different easy buntings.  Click HERE to visit those instructions.

A Sunny Day in Twin Falls!

A friend and I took a trip down to Twin Falls today.  We spied some bunting!

This was inside the shop called "Altered Purposes."  We took a little watercolor class there.  Lisa showed us how to use the woodless watercolor pencils and the watercolor crayons.  I think I like the watercolor crayons the best.  

She made some tags, for us, to paint on.  These are the ones I painted.  I really like the smear technique, I used on the upper right one, but I love them all.  Ewww . . . I could make some bunting with them!

Old Buildings and Bunting

I love taking photos of old buildings, even if they don't have bunting.  The photo below is of the old Ustick Merc.  My best friend and I used to ride our bikes out here from Ash Park Lane to post letters to our pen pals, when we were in Junior High.  It had worn wooden floors and lots of sweet goodies for the random bicycle rider to enjoy.  My favorite thing, at that time, was Shasta Apple Soda. 

I am glad this building is still here.  Boise has grown so much, torn down so much, built so much, and disappeared too many acres of farmland.  The area around the Ustick Merc used to be farmland, even in the 1970s, when I rode my bicycle out here.

Happy New Year!