How To: Birthday Banner

It is the munchkin's 3rd birthday today. I know. It was just yesterday that I hit puberty and now I have a 3-year-old.

But this birthday girl needed something special. My sister has a birthday banner that she puts up every birthday that is totally cute, so I wanted one too. But, since this idea came to me last night after dinner, I couldn't necessarily order one from etsy or something. But, I did have fabric scraps, cardstock, and ribbon!

I printed out the letters to "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" onto my cardstock and then painstakingly cut them out with my craft knife. It wasn't that hard, actually, but my finger hurt in the end :). Cricut owners, you have it made!

Then I traced circles around the letters. I flipped the paper over first so I wouldn't get marker on the front of my letters. My marker smelled like black licorice. Thank you, Crayola scented markers...

I cut the circles out...

and cut out a stack of blank circles to go on the back. Lots of cutting. Again, cricut people, I coveted your merchandise last night.

I gathered my fabric scraps, picking a different print for each letter. This would be great use of a charm pack, because I had to cut my pieces at 5" squares in order to have some fabric overhang.

Then I cut out a 5" circle and folded it in fourths.

I folded my fabric in fourths as well, and used the circle as a template to cut a circle out of my fabric.

Like so.

So then I had a stack of pretty fabric circles. I ended up not using this stripe, coincidentally.

Here is the basic idea of the look I am going for, and the sandwich layering:

After ironing all my circles, I sandwiched my circles so the back circle and the front circle were lined up nicely. Then I stitched around the front directly on the paper. I shall retire this needle immediately. I used colored thread= cute.

Then I stitched around each letter. There was a lot of manual cranking here... that foot pedal was getting lonesome.

For letters that needed an insert, I sewed around the main body first,

And then put the insert in place and stitched it down.

At this point, I really wanted pinking shears. Wouldn't the edges look cute all pinked? And less fraying, might I add...

After finishing all the circles and trimming all my threads, it was time to add string. In my case, ribbon. I cut a loooong piece, long enough to extend probably 18" from each end of each word. I found the middle and made a little crease.

I flipped all my letters over (don't make fun of the stitching- curves are challenging!) and for HAPPY, I put the crease of the ribbon in the middle of the P. Which is the middle letter, of course. I just used Elmer's glue to tack it down.

Then I glued the rest of the letters to the ribbon from that point. For BIRTHDAY, the center of the ribbon was in between T and H.

In the morning, when the glue had dried and the sun tried to poke through grey clouds, this lovely HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner was hung... with packaging tape. Sorry.

The munchkin was soooo excited. She loved it. And when she asked what it was for, I said it was for birthdays. To which she replied, "oh! hey! It's my birthday today!"

Happy 3rd, sweets. Now lets go make cookies.

Linking up to:

Blue Cricket Designs: Show and Tell

Somewhat Simple

Today's Creative Blog

Treasures for Tots

Fireflies and Jellybeans