It first started making an appearance at weddings and festivals five years ago and within weeks, no event was complete without a string (or ten) of bunting.
These days we use it to festoon everything from bedroom headboards to kitchen cupboards, but designer versions can be pricey, particularly if you like to decorate within a theme. This clever how-to by our resident DIY expert Eimear solves that problem for once and for all… the only question left is: which colour next?
Time: 30 minutes (depends on how many you want!)
What you need
- Card
- Ruler, tea lights (or whatever else you can find to create shapes) and pencil
- Scissors
- Thread
- Sewing machine
Method
- Decide what shapes you want to make with the card and start cutting. I used tealights as a template for the circles. The top of the triangles was 4cm and they were 4cm high. The squares were 4cm by 4cm. Seven pieces of card make two triangular garlands of about 1 m and 0.7 m long each.
- Organise your shapes (especially if you’re using triangles, make sure they are all facing the one way!) and set up your sewing machine.
- Using a basic stitch , start feeding in your pieces of card under the needle, you can leave as much or as little space between each shape. This is a bit of a stop/ start process as you line up the pieces each time but you’ll quickly find a rhythm.
- And that’s it! Make them as long or as short as you like, in different colours or shapes, it’s up to you. I made five garlands in the time it took to cool the water for a baby’s bottle – that’s multitasking!
Eimear is a mum of two small ladies and wife to the one man. She blogs from Cork about DIY, style, beauty, travel and life with small girls. Find her at The Two Darlings.
