Baby Name Banner

About a week before leaving town (solo with both kids), my husband brought home a baby shower invitation for one of the women he works with. As you may recall, my New Year's Resolution was to MAKE every gift I give this year. So at a time when I should have been doing laundry and packing, I was instead trying to figure out what I was going to make for the mommy and baby-to-be.

Once I found out the theme of the nursery was "Rocket Ship/Space" I was very excited. Why? Because I had the perfect gift already made from my Etsy shop. Every nursery needs a Binky Bag to house extra pacifiers and this one matches perfectly with the "space" theme.




But what else to make to match it? I had seen pennant banners before and thought it would be fun to make one to match the Binky Bag using the baby's name. I couldn't really find a good tutorial for one so I decided to make up my own. It turned out really cute (at least I think it did) so I decided to share it with you all.


I started with felt, fabric and some ribbon. I also needed thread (for the sewing machine and embroidery floss for hand stitching) and Heat N Bond Lite iron-on adhesive.



The next thing I did was figure out how big I wanted my pennants. I based this on the size of my felt. I could get 2 pennants out of one sheet of felt. Since I couldn't remember my high school geometry principles, I came up with an easy way to make a triangle. I decided how wide I wanted the top (6" in my case). I cut my piece of paper so that the width was 6" and the length was about what I wanted. I then folded it in half and drew a line from each of the top corners to the fold. Ta Da! A perfect triangle.



I then cut out my triangle, and using my rotary cutter, I cut out all of my felt pennants.



Next, I found a font on Microsoft Word that I liked and that fit with the "space" theme. I enlarged the letters of the baby's name so that they fit on the pennant. A couple of tips here: try to pick a font that is kind of simple, otherwise you will be doing a lot of exacto knife cutting (you will have to cut the letters out twice - once on the paper and again on the fabric). Also, you can find all kinds of free fonts on the internet if you don't see one you like on Microsoft. Just do a search for "free fonts" and you will come up with all kinds of stuff.



Then you want to iron your adhesive to the wrong side of your fabric, following the manufacturer's instructions.



Next trace your letters on to the paper backing of your adhesive. Remember you are working on the backside of your fabric so don't forget to reverse your letters when tracing them so they will be facing the right way from the front side of your fabric. (I remembered this for the "L" but forgot for the "G" and had to redo it; but not before I'd already cut it out, of course).



After you've traced all of your letter, carefully cut them out. It's best to use a pair of fabric scissors and an exacto knife for this.



Now you will peel off the paper backing, place the letters where you want them on your pennants and iron them on (again according to your manufacturer's instructions).

I haven't worked with felt too much before and I discovered that when I ironed my letters on to the felt, it shrunk a tiny bit and changed the texture slightly. It was not a big deal, I just made sure to iron the whole pennant (rather than just where the letter was going) so it would be consistent.



I decided to hand stitch around each of my letters using 2 strands of embroidery floss. You could applique your letters or just machine stitch around them, but I liked the look of the hand stitching. You don't even have to stitch around the letters if you don't want to. I'd just be sure to use a Heavy Heat N Bond for that though, just in case.



Then I cut each of the sides of the triangle with my pinking shears just to give it some added decoration.



Finally I spaced out my pennants about 1/2" apart and pinned my ribbon to the top of each pennant. I heat sealed each end of my ribbon to make sure it won't fray. I left about 7" of slack on either end for it to be hung.



Then I ran in to a dilemma. I wasn't sure how Logan's mommy was going to hang this pennant. I wanted her to be able to hang it on the crib or on the wall (or anywhere else for that matter) so I didn't want to just leave the ends of the ribbon as they were. Sure, she could knot them around the crib wrungs, but I didn't think that would be very cute. I certainly didn't want her to have to put a nail through the ribbon if she wanted it to hang on the wall. So I came up with a genius idea (patting myself on the back now). I pinned a second piece of ribbon to the backside of the pennant, equal to the 7" of slack from the front side ribbon. This way, she can tie it in a cute bow!



Here's what it looks like from the back.



Then I sewed the whole thing together on my sewing machine and Voila! A cute pennant banner with baby's name on it.



This project was super easy and super fast. I acutally had everything I needed to make it already in my craft closet (ok, so I don't really have a craft closet, more like craft piles that have taken over my dining room, but maybe someday I'll get organized!). This was also a very affordable project. You can buy felt for $.25 a sheet (remember I got 2 triangles out of 1 sheet of felt). It doesn't use much fabric (it would even be cute to use different scraps for each letter!). And most of us have ribbon laying around the house (if not, you can pick up a whole spool at Michael's for $1-$2). That's it! I really love this project and think it would be cute for a birthday party or other holiday. You could even spell out "Happy Birthday" or "Welcome Home" rather than just using a name. (I see many more pennants in my future!)

I hope Logan's mommy enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it for her! Let me know if you give it a try!

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