24 Projects in 12 - #3 Easy DIY Felt Banner

As one of my GOALS for 2013, I committed to making 24 projects in 12 months. My third project of this series is a felt name banner I made for my youngest son.

[Click here to see Project 1 & Project 2.]

This felt banner is an easy project and fairly simple to figure out how to do for yourself. I won't do an official tutorial, but I will demonstrate the basic process in these photos and share a few tricks I learned along the way.

TIP: To make patterns for my letters, I opened a new MS WORD document sized 8.5x11. I typed in one letter of the name in Arial font, I set it to BOLD and increased the font size as large as possible with the default margins but that none of the letter would be lost during print.

When the size was just right, I printed the letter out using the fast draft black & white setting (to save ink). I repeated this process for each letter. And then cut them out.

I used three different colors for my letters. My son wanted the two outside letters the same color, the second from the beginning and the second from the end to be the same color and the middle two letters to be the same color. 

Don't ask me why! It is his banner, so I did it exactly as he wanted.

My pieces of felt were purchased at Michaels & Joann craft stores. They come in 9x11 inch pieces. The letters I printed out using MS Word fit perfectly since they fit on an 8.5x11 document.

This also gave room for the notch I cut in the bottom of each felt piece to give the look of a banner. 

To cut the notch, I folded each piece of felt lengthwise. I measured up two inches from the bottom along the folded side of the felt. Using a Sharpie marker I made a small dot two inches up the fold. Then I used a wooden ruler with a strong metal edge to make a straight line from that dot to the bottom corner of the felt on the opposite edge of the felt. 

Using the ruler as a stright edge, I drew a straight line from the dot to the corner of the felt. I cut along the line through both layers of fabric and when unfolded was the right shape for a banner.

After cutting out all of the paper letters, I pinned them to the correct color of felt. Two letters fit on each piece of felt just right. Then I cut the letters from the felt.

The next step was pinning (with straight pins) the felt letters to the banner pieces. I think my letters turned out a bit too large, so you might consider making your letters smaller if you use the same technique I do to create your paper letter patterns.

To permanently attach the letters to the blue felt pieces I used my sewing machine. I used a simple straight stitch.

You could also use craft glue to adhere your letters.

The final step was hanging my banner. I wanted to keep it simple and easy, so I bought a pack of small wooden clothes pins and a ball of twine. 

I used two pins to attach each letter to the twine.

Here it is hanging across the window the morning of his birthday. 

To make it extra special, I made an extra banner piece with a birthday cupcake. I sketched out my pattern on printer paper and pinned it to my felt scraps before cutting it out.

Again, I used my sewing machine to stitch 

Per the birthday boys' request, the candle was in the shape of a "B". 

To save a little time, I glued the flame a top the candle's wick instead of stitching it on.

Here is the banner including the special birthday piece hung in the party room during his birthday party.

This banner will be hung in our home for any special occasion to honor my son. He has another special milestone coming up next month and I plan to make a special banner piece that matches the theme and hang this in our home to help celebrate.

Comments

[Rebekah]

This turned out fantastic!! And go you on getting creative and having fun!!

[Louise]

this is brilliant..love it!

[Nihao, Cupcake! by Margie]

Louise, you are far too kind! Thank you.

[Colleen Fawkner]

A fun project. I'll bet your son loves it. Thanks for stopping by my space. A good idea to check out what others have done for the 10 challenge at BPC. I will keep an eye out to see what you come up with. It was a fun challenge. A little daunting a first but once you get started it soon comes together.

Love your Project Life work. I have joined you on Pinterest. I am looking at getting into Project Life soon

[Nihao, Cupcake! by Margie]

Thanks! He does love it. Thanks for stopping by! I'm hoping to do the 10-10-10 challenge sometime this week. I hope I'm up for it. Project Life is lots of fun. But if you do it the weekly or daily way, it can be a huge undertaking though rewarding. I'm loving it.

[Nihao, Cupcake! by Margie]

Thank you! Yes, I am trying to be creative this year and COMPLETE projects.