Giving Thanks Banner

As I mentioned in my Season of Crafting post, I love banners. I started out the banner craze with an obsession to making a birthday banner for each of the kids for their special day. I realized it was a simple way to add life to a room and decided to expand my banner mania by making one for each season. If I was ever stuck for an idea, Pinterest had millions of ideas at my disposal. I will most likely post more on banners for future holidays because I love making them and love sharing them even more. This post is all about Thanksgiving, however, so let's focus on this fun, festive, fall decoration. Yup, all that and alliteration. I'm multi-talented.

Fall brings feelings of warmth and coziness in the colors and patterns and fabric choices. I've made a lot of paper crafting banners but for Thanksgiving I decided to try my hand at burlap. If you're not a burlap person, I totally get it, it's pretty country and maybe it's not your style. If that's the case, you can stick with the fabric since I mix fabrics in this banner. I love the look of burlap and had been looking for an excuse to buy colored burlap.

My local fabric store had natural, orange and dark brown which I thought would be perfect. I grabbed some other patterns and colors in the same color palette and was ready to go. The beauty of this craft is that it's simple and has no real template. If the sizes are a little off or if the cutting is a little sloppy, it's okay because it works and looks like it's meant to be that way. This is another good one to do with the kiddies if you're feeling it.

I started out by cutting two triangles in each fabric style so I could lay them out and figure out which ones I liked and in which order. I made sure to make the triangles long and narrow with an inch of extra fabric at the top so I could fold it over about a half inch and sew it for the string. You can either hand sew it or use a sewing machine if you have one.

At this point, you can stop and finish yours or you can continue on and paint words on your banner. If you have stencils you can use those, but if you don't there's an easy, cheap fix for that. Just pick a fun font on your computer and print it out on the thickest paper stock you have (so it won't tear). That way you can cut out and trace the lettering onto the fabric and hand paint it. When you're coming up with your saying make sure to think about the space you're going to hang your banner. Unless you have a gigantic space, you'll need to keep it short and sweet.

Again, you can stop at this point if you're loving the outcome. I'm an annoying perfectionist and wanted to add some extra finishing touches. I used twine to string the banner because it worked with the look of the burlap. You can use ribbon if you like that better. I also cut up some strips of the fabric and tied them between each flag to add a little extra country touch. I have made banners in the past that took me hours only to end up in the trash because they didn't come out how I wanted. Just start again if this happens. Figure out what you hate and give it another go. I'm the queen of perfection on the second and third go around. I loved how this one came out and I hope you love yours too. If you do, shoot me a photo so I can see!