Peace and Joy Pennant Banners

I’ve really been into banners the past few years. It started with bright, cotton pennant banners for my daughter’s barn wedding. Since then I’ve made them for birthdays, a summer cocktail party, Halloween and now for Christmas too. My home is mostly done in neutrals with pops of color that I change out on a whim. So I decided to make natural and white pennants with bright red accents.

I love the look of burlap. (Have you noticed how hot burlap everything is this year!?)  But the problem is burlap itself is loosely woven, scratchy and miserable to work with. What people really want is a burlap look-alike for home decor. There are lots of fabrics that will fit the bill – osnaburg, weavers cloth, linen, and linen blends are all easy to work with, have a nubby, woven appearance and wash beautifully. Plus they are soft to the touch. For this project I used flax-colored linen and two cotton-poly printed fabrics.

First determine how big the flags themselves should be. I used an 8” X 10” triangle for this project, but you can adjust your size as needed. I made a template from a scrap of heavy cardboard, then traced the triangles onto the back of my fabric.

Joy and Peace Holiday Pennants

1/2 yard of background pennant fabric

¼   yard of contrast pennant fabric

¼   yard or less of fabric for letters

Iron-on fusible webbing

Ribbon

Buttons for the corners of each pennant triangle.

First, because I wanted heavier weight flags, I fused two lengths of linen together back to back. I think the heavier weight helps the banner hang nicer. Next I traced my pennant template on the back of the fabric. By flipping the template up and down you can get continuous cut lines to follow. Cut out the triangles using pinking shears.  

I next traced the template onto the back of my white fabric and cut out the same number of pennants. Stack the two pennants with the front fabric offset a little to show a half inch or so of the background pennant and baste across the top to join. Cut off the excess front fabric to match the top of the back pennant.

The white fabric is folded to the back in this photo, but you can just cut off the excess at the top.

Iron the fusible webbing to the back of your lettering fabric leaving the paper backing on. Cut out your letters from this fabric. (The easiest way to do this is to take your fabric to a local scrapbooking store and use their die cut letters. Remember to cut the letters from the front of the fabric so they will iron on in the correct direction!)

Peel the paper backing from the letters and iron them to the front pennant triangles. Lay out the pennants to form your words and pin ribbon to the top edge. Sew across with a zigzag stitch matching your thread color to the color of the ribbon. You can leave as much space between the triangles as you like. I left about two inches. Finally sew buttons to the corners of the pennants using embroidery floss. I used a mixture of pearly white buttons.

Front of banner with buttons

Back of banner

Have fun making your own banner and let me see what you come up with!
Happy First Day of December!