Bunting in the Kuna Days Parade!

The Piecemakers of Idaho, quilt group, were once again, in the Kuna Days Parade.  What a sweet pick-up we had to tow our trailer (float).  We tied that soft cotton bunting on the hood and wow did it look great!

Bunting at Good Friends "Doll" Quilt Show

Those doll quilters sure had a good show.  The bunting, to keep the public from touching, was wonderful.  The stanchions were amazingly painted traffic cones. 

You can see this doll quilt show at the Boise Basin Quilt Show on September 26-27, 2025, at Expo Idaho, in Garden City, Idaho.  The quilts displayed this year, will be completely different from last year's show.  To see the doll quilt blog, and all their amazing work:  https://czdollquilts.blogspot.com/   The premise, is that the dolls made the quilts.

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!

It has been about two years since I last posted about bunting.  Life is busy.  Last month, as described on my quilt blog, I went on a day trip, with my daughter, to Twin Falls.  We saw a lot of bunting that day.  I have three or more photographs of bunting.  The best bunting was hanging over the door at Altered Purposes on Main Avenue.

But there is more.  There was bunting behind the bunting.  More bunting!  It is secret Halloween bunting.

And . . . there was amazing scrappy bunting decorating the inside back wall of the store.

I know it is difficult to look past all the amazing stuff in this photo to see the bunting going across the top, but it is worth it.

Trick or Treat!

 I had a wonderful time at a quilting retreat in Cascade, from Oct 27 -Oct 31.  I got back just in time to hang out my freshly finished Halloween bunting, so all the ghouls and monsters (and Spiderman) could get that festive feeling during their Trick or Treat endeavors.  

I left it up overnight and when it started to rain later in the afternoon, my wonderful husband went out and took it down and folded it up neatly for me.  When I got home from work, it was a pleasant surprise.

Halloween Bunting

I worked on more bunting on our recent camping trip up at Brownlee Reservoir.  Recent was last week.  Got it done in no time.  Here it is just hung in our little entry hallway.  I will hang it outside, next week, for Halloween.  I will be watching the forecast closely, as I think I would rather it not get rained on, it's very first time outside.

Of course, it is washable, but it looks so crisp and colorful right now.  It is a few feet longer than you can see in this photo.  Happy Haunting! 

Add Bunting to Your Pop-up!

The bunting I made last year, to go on the awning of our RV, actually fits perfectly around my blue and white pop-up.  We had a patio extension made from pavers installed in our back yard.  Then I put up my pop-up for shade.  My ladies club came over and it was quite festive with the bunting on our shade producing pop-up.

My 2020 Bunting

 We had to cancel our scheduled vacation plans for 2020. I think everyone knows why that is.  So, we have been taking time to go camping in our RV.  The week before Memorial Day, there were so many people up at our favorite 'hooked-up' camping place and hot springs, we decided to go off the grid!  We have been camping on the Boise National Forest (Cottonwood District as it used to be called).  We camped at Long Gulch, where the Guard Station used to actually be located, Rattlesnake Creek, and Smith Creek.

When we were at Long Gulch, my husband said I should sew some bunting just for our RV.  So, we measured our awning and I got to work on some obnoxious bunting.  Obnoxious is what several of my quilts, this summer, have been named, due to their very bright qualities.  You can see my posts about those on my main blog:  http://glutenfreequilter.blogspot.com   I used many of the left over fabrics from Obnoxious I, II, III, and IV for the bunting, and I pieced a couple wonky house bunts, and a skull bunt, and used some Pete the Cat fabric.  It turned out marvelous and not obnoxious at all!

The photo, above, is showing the back side of the bunting.  This was at Rattlesnake Creek, the week of August 10.  Where I actually go to sew, with my Necchi sewing machine, being powered by six solar panels and one battery.  I sewed for over an hour, with my bunting gently waving in the breeze.

I used some of those little clips all the quilters like to clip their binding on with, to clip the bunting to the awning.  I made the bunting binding with approximately 36 inches of leader on each end with button holes and buttons for securing the ends.  I have taken photos of my construction process, so I will be adding a tutorial on how to make this, in September.  It was easy and 'sew' much fun to get crazy and make fun bunting to help cheer up our 2020 time off from work experiences.

Holiday Bunting

Bunting is definitely for holidays, but can be for anytime you need a little spruce-up of your surroundings.  That one bunting that is on my blog header, you know the one; look at the top of the page.  Anyway, I used it last year to decorate a booth at the quilt show and to decorate Mr. R's old pickup truck for the Kuna Days Parade.  I used it on the patio for when the CLS came over to visit and do some fabric painting.  I washed it, pressed it, folded it up and put it away for the winter.  It is already for fair weather spruce-ups in 2020.

However, I think I want to make another one that is longer in length, so the sprucing goes farther.  The one below, I made for the quilt show a few years back.  It was awesome!  I have it all wadded up in a bag of scraps in my cabinet.  If you have a bunch of scraps, you don't wish to throw out, you could do something along these lines, but perhaps a little tidier.  You could pink the edges of the scraps and make a tidy binding for them to be hanging from.  That would be nicer looking, yet easy.

This was announcing the theme of the next show, which was "Scrap Happy"

Below is the bunting I hang in my dining room at Christmas time. I did not make this bunting.  I bought it at the Craft Warehouse.  I connected both ends to some loops of scrap fabric then hung the loop ends around the knobs at each end of my curtain rod.  Rods with knobs rock!

Bunting in McCall, Idaho

I took my friend, T, and my Aunt Daisy with me on a little road trip on Saturday.  We delivered a quilt to the Council Quilt Show in Council, Id.  Then we had a picnic and drove up to New Meadows and then down to McCall.  We sat on the shore of Payette Lake and watched the waves come in and a storm pass by, before going to the Huckleberry Quilt Shop.  This is the bunting I found there.  So, original!  I think I may become approving of those little yo-yo's yet!

flowers bunting -how charming, indeed

Bunting at Luxembourg Fabric Festival 2018

My daughter is living in Germany, and Luxembourg the country and city is located just a few miles across the western border of Germany.  She went to the Fabric Festival there, about three weeks ago.  Maybe it was in February?
She posted gobs of photos on her Facebook page.  She has tolerated me needing to stop at quilt shops across this country when we have traveled, and in S Korea and Japan last year.  She has a really good grasp of what appeals to me, when it comes to fabrics and stuff.  Here is a photo she took at the Luxembourg Fabric Festival a few weeks ago. 

This is the bunting photo.  A little peek into fabric show in another country.
I sure wish I could have been there myself!

Wedding Bunting - I made some wedding bunting just before Christmas for, Marie, the bride planning a shabby-chic wedding for June 2013.  She told me her colors and I borrowed her sweet suitcase for a few days.  I had just the most excellent retro fabric that my cousin had found for me at a yard sale last summer.  I washed it and pressed it and cut the letters from it. It was an old fashioned two-toned green. I had left over pale pink on ivory fabric from the Shiloh Quilt I made about three years ago. It worked perfectly.  I used the same technique I used on my Halloween and Christmas buntings; fusable fleece.  I did make a binding strip with a floral print that had just a smidgen of plum in it to go with the lining of the suit case.  Marie loved it! 


All the wedding cards will go into this lovely old suitcase at the wedding.

                         

Decorate your cubicle wall at work. After all, you spend 40 hours a week there. Let's be cheery!  Here is the jack-o-lantern bunting I made for my cubicle wall at work. It took me less than an hour to make the bunting!  Notice the sweet photo (really big photo) of Merlinda the Ninja Cat. Yes, I do have photos of her doing other things rather than sleeping on one quilt or another.  Go to my glutenfreequilter blog to view quilt Merlinda photos. Just click on the link above, the right.

I made the bunting with the fusable fleece.  I viewed the video produced by the Missouri Star Quilt Company. The link to the video is below in the instructions called "Easier".  It really is is easier!    To make it even easier, here is that link again.  Missouri Star Bunting Tutorial   [they call it a garland and used a charm pack]

I picked up three halloween fabrics, 5 yards pom-pom trim, and 1/2 yard fusible fleece at Hancock Fabrics. I already had a wedge shaped ruler. I cut a 5" strip of each fabric, then adhered it to the fusable fleece, as instructed in the video. Then I cut the three strips apart and used my wedge to cut all the triangles.  Using my triangle wedge kept me from wasting any of my fabric.  I made my triangles bigger than those on the tutorial and sewed seven of the triangles to the pom-pom trim. The one below looks a bit brighter on my green cutting mat.


place decorative trim in place, then sew it down

 I made one to decorate my cubicle at work and the other for a friend. I used a contrasting color of thread on one, with one of my fancy stitches on my new machine. It is 54 inches in length, so is just right for a window or a cubicle wall.  The best thing about making this festive bunting is it took so little time. Instant gratification is a good thing!

At the Hen House Retreat last weekend I saw a cute idea for making easy bunting using those pom pom trims.  I like it!

I have been seeing more bunting around, lately, than ever before.  I find it so very festive. I am into festive, especially if I can make it myself.  Looking into bunting, I have discovered that I taught my Brownie Girl Scouts how to make bunting back in the 1980’s. I did not know it was called bunting.  I think bunting is more a British decoration, and folks in the U.S. just call them garlands or decorations.

I found out that bunting is a lightweight cloth used for flags and festive decorations. It usually has a shiny surface, which of course will catch the sun, as they were typically outdoor decorations.  The light weight makes them move in the wind better.

Today, "bunting" is a term for any festive decorations made of fabric, or of plastic, paper, or even cardboard as in imitation of fabric.  To see a couple more photos and more information on bunting, check out Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunting

Following are three easy ways to make your own bunting:

Easy:

I found this sweet fabric bunting in a book, Sew Charming, by Cath Derksema and Kirsten Junor.  I bought some fab summer fabrics and discovered I could get three flags out of a fat quarter. Then there is a little strip of fabric left, that can be used in the binding strip that holds them all together.  You connect all the strips, just like you would to make binding for a quilt.  So, my bunting has a colorful strip holding all the flag parts.   I made my own pattern using a scrap of peltex, but card stock, or cardboard will work fine. I just traced it onto the fabric with a sharpie marker. Once you cut out the shapes and sew them right sides together, you don’t see the sharpie marker.  Then you turn them right side out and press them.  The raw (open) edge just gets tucked into your binding strip, pin it in place, then sew along the binding strip until you have them all on there.  After I sewed mine up, I added a button and two button holes on each end, of the binding strip, so I have an adjustable way of fastening it to whatever hook or nail I decide to.

I hang mine on my patio, but Cath and Kirsten of Sew Charming, made theirs for a big beach umbrella, which looks so totally festive and breezy you want to make one!

Easier:

Follow the link, below,to a swell tutorial on how to make a holiday bunting.  The only sewing involved is when you attach the individual flags to the binding strip, which in this case is pre-made binding that you purchase at a fabric shop.  Thank you, Missouri Star Quilt Company, for having this wonderful tutorial!

1)      You use a charm pack, so there is hardly any cutting

2)      You learn about a new amazing product that you just press your fabric to, and it sticks!

3)      It does not have to be a Christmas charm pack, but any old one that suites your fancy

4)      Before you know it, you have it all done!  Done ……nice.

Missouri Star Tutorial