Easy Peasy Christmas bunting

We were in need of some new Christmas decorations and were shown how to make these by another home edder at a home ed group. Really really easy bunting!

First cut squares out of scraps of material. We used pinking shears to reduce fraying, but ordinary scissors are fine too (and the fraying just makes them look authentically rustic!).
The squares don't have to be a particular size (2-3 inches square works fine with thinner fabrics, you can go larger with stiffer fabric (light fabric tends to flop a bit if squares are large, as we discovered!). Vary the sizes and don't worry about making the squares precise unless you are totally retentive.


We used mostly free fabric swatches (checked and silk furnishing fabric samples) so the material was stiffer and worked well.



Use an ordinary running thread to sew diagonally across the square. We used our hand-cranked sewing machine which is evil, but easier for the kids to control than my equally evil electric one. Don't fasten off, just keep going.

Sew a couple of stitches after you come off the diagonal point and then tuck the next square in and carry on going. Having a couple of stitches between squares helps them to twist and spin a little.



We found some shiny fabric and popped that in as well to make it look a bit more Christmassy.


When you get to the end of all your squares just do a few stitches back the other way and fasten off.

You can choose to have short bunting strands and hang them vertically, or do like we've done and make a super-long string of them to go across the room in a zig zag.

The photos don't do them justice, but you get the idea.

Like I said - easy peasy! (And a good way to use up those not-so-nice fabric scraps that you can't bear to throw away)


(Spot the lovely hanging paper Christmas tree we got from Wilkos this year only £1!)

This year's bunting hung above last year's strings of pot pourri and little hand-sewn padded hearts:

Soul of sunday : A well oiled machine

Life should be a well-oiled machine.

I'm sure someone famous said that. Or they should have.

In my case life goes along in a sort of grindy-crunchy-stop-start-rattly-lets-hope-noone-notices-the-bits-that-are-falling-off machine. My well-neglected and frequently sworn-at sewing machine is an ongoing metaphor for my days. I call it THE BEAST. (Anyone who knows me knows that I call all machines that frustrate me THE BEAST). This weekend I finally took the time to take it apart and oil it.

So this is my Soul of Sunday photo:

(linked to soul of sunday post on ordinarylifemagic blog here)

The rebellious seamstress

You know the saying Life is too short to make peg bags..? Yes?

Well actually that isn't really a saying, I just made it up. But if it were a saying it would be a jolly good one.

Anyway, life really IS too short to make pegbags. But I like to take up those few useless seconds that I would otherwise squander on drinking wine, daydreaming and writing a bestseller. Besides, when your peg bag gets to looking like this, drastic measures are needed.

So I get some of this (impossibly thick, fades easily, and which coincidentally is exactly the same covering as our futon cover):

And some of this (bright orange and smooth with lumpy velour leopard patterns on it):

To make one of these:

And yeah, I know that the flower isn't even, and the sewing is wonky and, well just don't look too close. But it does function as a peg bag. It holds pegs slightly better than a carrier bag would and may have a slightly longer life-span. What more can you ask for?

Of course if Carlsberg made peg bags they would make peg bags like this. Actually they'd probably make beg bags that looked like cans of Carlsberg (never one to miss out on a promotional opportunity). But you get my drift.

I was never born to be a seamstress. At least not a conventional one. Let me give you a few reasons why...

1) I never use a pattern. Well I've bought loads and I have used one once. But once in 40 years doesn't count.

2) I never buy material. Unless you include the pennies I give the scrapstore for their eclectic bundle of offcuts. Well actually I did buy some material once, and that was to go with the pattern that I used, once.

3)The material that I do acquire is always completely useless for making anything that anyone sensible might want to or need to make. You know, I go for the weird, quirky, wacky stuff. The stuff that is too thick (needle-breaking) or too thin (needle-skidding) or just too damn shiny/bright/small/furry/glittery/boring/patchworky/skinny/fraying/odd-looking to be made into anything.

I choose material by looking at a pile in the scrapstore and going 'Ooh that looks like a tarts underwear, I'll have some of that' and 'that looks like a shredded piece of chainmail, I'll have some of that' and 'that would glow really well under UV light, I'll have some of that'.

You see my problem?

4)I never use the right thread. I mean I never use the right colour thread. Because if I've managed to find 10 minutes and a small space on the table in which to haul my machine out, then the last thing I want to be doing is running out to the shop to buy the right colour thread. If it goes through my machine without my machine jerking to a halt or spewing bundles of thread-spaghetti from under the needle, then I'll use it. So what if I'm using black thread on white material I LIKE CONTRAST!

5) And I can't be faffed with winding bobbins. So if the only bobbin with anything on it happens to be bright orange, then bright orange it is. Of course it goes without saying that this bobbin thread never matches the top thread, but there is an advantage in this: it lets me know (in bright orange) when the tension is wrong and the bobbin thread is coming up in big loops on the 'best' side of my sewing. It's not always orange. Sometimes it's purple. And on rare occasions it has been red.

7) I don't change my needle unless it breaks. But because I often use the inpenetrable furnishing material, my needle breaks at least once a year and so I probably change it as often as more conscientious sewers (that's people who sew, not those victorian pipes for chanelling your doo doo from your chamber pot to the English Channel).

Oh and I only ever use those needles labelled as being for 'jeans material'. Well, my logic goes that if the thick needles will go through thick stuff, they will also go through the thin stuff, so why buy a different set of needles for the thin stuff? (seamstresses all over the world will be turning in their little seamstressed coffins now)

6) I don't look after my machine. Once or twice a year it comes out onto the table. At regular intervals during sewing I blow the fluff from out of the bobbin compartment because otherwise the bobbin jams up. Often I bemoan the fact that it needs oiling and it's rattling so much that the table is vibrating. I remember that I still haven't replaced the bulb, so I can't actually see what I'm sewing. Then I put the cover on my machine (which is torn and needs replacing) and put it away for another 6 months.

8) No matter how often I ask for advice about sewing, I'm either too impatient, too arrogant or too damn lazy to take it. Am I bovvered? Probably not. But next time I ask you for advice, maybe you should just come over and do my sewing for me.