Bunting

[Note: For some reason Google, who hosts this blog, has taken a disliking to my photos on some of my recent posts. I'm checking them and replacing photos, but perhaps not always in the same location, as this is fairly tedious the first time, never mind a second and I've no idea if there will be a third...]

So far as I can remember, I didn't know what bunting was before I came to Britain. Not that I never saw it before, I just didn't have that word for it. I mostly remember it being a bunch of plastic flags, all one primary colour, on used car lots. They were strung from a pole or a roof to the ground to make a person notice the cars or the sale or whatever.  I just thought of it as 'a row of flags'. I thought of bunting as something to do with babies, but I'd no idea what to do with babies - still don't. I wasn't around babies much when I was growing up, being an only child and an only grandchild on both sides until I was 12. Surely 'baby bunting' isn't just this bunting in baby fabrics hung in a nursery? I thought it was some old-fashioned kind of swaddling or diapering or something. Anyhow.

I've been making some bunting for our WI's 10th birthday party in June. Not that we are likely to celebrate it in June, but we'll celebrate it someday.  I may or may not be there. Oh, I'm planning on being alive, but I don't really fancy returning to 'normal' life until they find a good treatment for this Covid-19, better yet, a vaccine. I doubt I can tie Bill down until a vaccine emerges, however. But enough of that stuff that never goes away.

Bunting. It's not too hard to make, depending upon how fancy you want it. Mine involved dinking around with a 1" strip of fabric folded into quarters, for the binding the flags would be hanging from. I used tons of pins and still got some steam burns, but none that blistered. 

I have a tape maker somewhere, a gadget that is supposed to magically produce bias binding. However, I  never succeeded in even getting the fabric inserted, so felt it a was of money. 

Then I tried a trick I saw on Youtube countless times, where you put a long needle into your ironing board cover and run the strips under it. That worked a lot easier than pinning. Then Bill suggested I make a video, which I did with his help - two of them. About as amateur as you can imagine. Not to mention my 90-year-old hands, due to baking in the sun for 40 years (hands on steering wheels get all the wrinkle making rays). He also suggested the second one, showing how to put the needle in. Seemed obvious to me, but I humoured him.

I finally worked out ot bring the two edges together in the middle before they went under the needle, then to use the weight of the iron back before the un-pressed section, to help me pull it all tight. That made the ends lie down to be pressed and it all went much faster after that.

I made my first flags with opposites sides in complementary colours (opposite side of the colour wheel) just to have a system. Those went in the centre of my binding. Then I made a diagram on an envelope and selected pairings of colours so that nothing would repeat very close on each side, in colour or at least in pattern.  No idea if that makes sense. I tried to use the whole rainbow, including lighter shades but not including neutrals. 

Me trying to figure out how to control the fabric, also to get the cameraman
to not burn himself and not block my sight.

It makes a big mess having all those colours out at once! But then I always make a big mess when I sew. Hope to make a few more sets of bunting and then move on to something else. I'll let you know how that goes.

Placing the needle was far easier without the first time, without an audience!

Enjoy the videos (good for a laugh if nothing else). I'll never take a slick production for granted again!