How to make embroidered felt bunting

I have partnered with Brother Sewing to share a seasonally themed project post. As a Christmas craft, I decided to make some simple felt bunting to decorate our mantle piece, with embroidered snowflake and star detail. See below for instructions!

You will need:

Felt in festive colours
Contrasting embroidery thread
Contrasting cotton thread
Ribbon

Instructions:

First cut out your bunting pennants from the felt. I measured across the top of our fireplace to work out how many I needed, and decided that six would look best. I made a template from thin cardboard that I used to cut out the felt triangles.

Then use the sewing machine to make a border for the triangles using a contrasting thread. I used a slightly cream colour.

It doesn't matter if your lines are a little uneven as you can always trim the felt once your are finished! When you reach the point of the pendant, move the needle into the down position while you turn the felt around to do the other side, this will leave you with a nice point at the bottom.

Then you can embroider a simple design onto each triangle. I found a simple snowflake and star design on PicMonkey that I printed out to the correct size and traced onto parchment paper. There are various ways of transferring a design onto fabric, but I find that this method works well. Pin the paper into place and sew on top using embroidery thread.

Then when you have finished, tear away the paper to leave the embroidery. You might need to pull through some of the thread from the back to make sure that it's nice and tight.

Repeat this process for each triangle.

Then select some ribbon to use to hang the bunting. I used a cream coloured ribbon. I measured the width of the mantle piece, and added a bit extra each side for hanging. Then I worked out how far apart my triangles needed to be so that they were evenly spaced across, I ended up with a 9 cm gap.

Use the sewing machine to sew each triangle to the ribbon. I used a cotton that matched the ribbon, but you could also use a contrasting colour for a bit more interest. Take care to line everything up so that it looks neat.

Then the bunting is ready to hang! I've just used tape to secure each end to the mantle piece, as the bunting is quite light.

This blog post was written in collaboration with Brother Sewing.