I was really touched a couple of months ago when the lovely gals over at It's A Creative World invited me to join them. They post every day on a wide range of art and craft topics and have an amazing variety of talents between them. I'll be posting twice a month over there, and today I posted about hand carving stamps.

I'm back.
Back from a week in Barcelona.
Back from five months of a temporary/acting promotion.
Back - on the way back anyway - from the workload of a foundation year course.
Back to my life, a delicate balance of unpredictability and creativity and busy-ness and stillness and all that I love.

And back here. Thank you for waiting.

Such a joyful thing to be doing with this wonderful spring weather. Soooo good to get my sewing machine out, I've been wanting to for six months. My friend made bunting for her daughter's (my Goddaughter) birthday a couple of years ago and it looked amazing - I've been wanting to try it ever since. With a garden party planned at work it seemed like the perfect time. I ran a mini-tutorial on Twitter, which I will share here and expand the notes later on for clarity.

I knew roughly what I wanted, but I was trying to decide how to finish the edges and what sort of spacing I wanted between my flags. I came, I googled, I found: Nasty Wench, Laura Ashley and for kids. None was quite what I wanted, but it clarified what I DID want, so I began.

I gathered 1-2 metres of 5 different fabrics. You won't need this much unless you are aiming for the 20 metres that I was. I got 20 finished pennants out of roughly a metre of fabric. I also bought a a fresh spool of thread and a full roll (20m) of 25mm bias tape. You could certainly make your own, and it would be lovely, but I wasn't making 20m of bias binding. This was a one day job.

	Tweets: Home-sewn bunting step #1 - Cut out your ideal triangle out of cardboard. Mine was 6" wide b 7.5" long. Home-sewn bunting step #2 - From freezer paper, cut out as many triangles as you want flags on your bunting.
	Home-sewn bunting step #3 - With fabric folded right sides together, iron on freezer paper triangles & pin corners. Home-sewn bunting hint: place your triangles carefully and you can cut with very little waste.
	Home-sewn bunting step #4 - Cut out your triangles. Depending on size & spacing, you'll need + or - 5 a metre. Home-sewn bunting hint - if you cut out your triangles with pinking shears you won't need to turn them inside out once they're sewn.
	Home-sewn bunting step #5 - Chain stitch your triangles, sewing only the long sides together.
	Home-sewn bunting step #6 - Turn triangles right way out, poke corner & press into shape using cardboard template.
	Home-sewn bunting step #7 - Sort your pennants into a colour order you like and stack ready to pin.
	Home-sewn bunting step #8 - Space pennants (I used a 3" cardboard template) and pin into folded bias tape. Stitch.