How I made the name flags

Hard to believe it has been since March that I have posted but i have painted a large pile of paintings and made several quilts...so i have been busy...also went to the antiques roadshow where our dear friend Siobhan was a BIG winner:>  We hope she will be on tv next season...we were all so tickled for her we didn't have time to be sad that we didn't have big winners!!

And the winner is...Siobhan

So back to those flags...how did i make them???

First I downloaded and printed the free A B C Pillow from MarthaStewart.com ABC templates and traced my soon to be born grandchild Henry's name on freezer paper. I cut them out and tried not to loose them all!!  They do have a habit of floating away!!  BYTW I know we all have a habit of pooping Mawtha BUT there is alot of great free how to content on her site...not just recipes but all kinds of craft patterns...not to be sniffed at...like these charming alphabet letters!!

The Back

 I next took some stabilizer I had leftover from making postcards(4"x6") and fused fabric to both sides of it with heat and bond. I was not sure what i was doing with the letters at this point.  If i were making flags again I would not do this step...i would just put fusible on the back so i could fuse them to the flags before i sewed them.

The Front

The fabric I used was leftovers from Henry's babyquilt that I made back in March.

I ironed the freezer paper letters to the individual pieces.

Then I traced the letters with a pencil.  It would have been better if i had used a wash away marking pen BUT the pencil was handy!!

Next I stitched around each letter with the buttonhole stitch on my LOVELY Janome Horizon...did i say i am in love???  Next I cut them out about 1/8" from the stitching with my very sharp small fiskars.

So what to do with the letters...at first i thought i might get out the crocodile and add eyelets to them...that would have been cute with the letters strung from yarn or streamers BUT I decided I wanted to make flags out of them.

Here are the flags:

Henry's Flags

So how did i make them....remember these were just scraps and i only had small amounts of the $15 a yard fabric.  I did NOT want to buy more. I sewed two strips together to make two different sets together...one was 11" long.  The other 16.5 inches.  I then turned over a small 1/4 inch hem  and another 1" hem at the top and sewed it down. I embellished it with feather stitch.   I cut them into 5 1/2 inch strips...all raw edges except the top.

I glued the letters on with roxannes glue baste it...about an 1 1/4" from the top and sewed the letters on with straight stitch.  I then ripped 1/2" strips of all the fabrics and strung the letter flags on one of the longest strips.  I cut the rest of the strips from the four fabrics into various lengths of 12 -16" and tied them on each side of the name banners to make "tassels".  These tassels are just tied on...

I thought they would be fun to use as prayer flags...everyone could right prayers or blessings for the baby on them and they could be hung outside to be carried to the heavens...I will let his mom decide...because of course they would be cute in the nursery or hung over the front door to let the neighbors know...but i DO Like the idea of prayer flags...i really do...we are making more on Wednesday if Henry doesn't come by then!