Home-made, recycled baby bunting

Some of the second-hand children's clothing bought from the Salvo's for the bunting

Pinning the paper triangle template onto the washed fabrics and cutting out the shapes.  A very interested Jolly cat comes to investigate the crafty activity   

All the fabric triangles pinned face-to-face ready for sewing.  Jolly cat 'helps' by pressing the triangle pieces so they are nice and flat!  

After sewing the sides together the fabric triangles are turned inside out - so the front of the fabric is now on the outside   

The fabric triangles are stitched to the tape mixing up the colours and patterns 

And here is the finished bunting suspended from each corner of the ceiling - very cute!  

I've also made a few toys recycled from gloves and socks below (the monkeys rather fabulous jumper is an old pair of my thermal leggins!!)  I used the book Sock and Glove - Creating Charming Soft Friends from Cast-off Socks and Gloves by the very clever Miyako Kanamori.  There is a link here with some images of people who've made much better toys than me!   

Well, things are getting ever closer here in preparation for the baby!  So, I've been busy making a few things for the baby's room.  I recently made some bunting recycled from second-hand children's clothes, some old pyjamas of mine, and some offcuts of fabric.  

It's been fun to make the bunting, and I love the mix of all the different coloured and patterned fabrics!  I've used different fabric on each side of the bunting, and as we don't know what 'flavour' baby we're having I wanted to make something suitable for a boy or girl - and using the children's clothing has been perfect to get some cute patterns and colours for either.

The bunting was really very easy to make, and just requires a sewing machine and some time.  You could use any old or second-hand fabrics for different looks - vintage fabrics and teatowels would be cute, or un-used clothing and bedding for example.

Here's what I did:

1. Firstly I washed all the second-hand clothing (and pressed any particularly wrinkly fabrics so they were nice and flat), and made myself a paper triangle template.  Because I decided to have different fabric on either side, I made sure my triangle was about 1cm larger than I wanted the finished pieces to be, to allow for stitching the pieces together.

2. Then, I pinned my paper triangle template onto the different fabrics and carefully cut out the triangle shapes.  I made sure I had lots of triangular pieces of fabric in different colours and patterns - including some plain colours.

3. When the triangular fabric shapes were cut I pressed them to make sure they were all nice and flat, and then started to pair them up, making sure there were different colours and patterns on each side.

4. I then pinned each pair of fabric triangles face-to-face (i.e. so the front of each piece of fabric faces each other) and using the sewing machine stitched along the two sides of the triangles only - leaving the top unstitched and open.  The stitched pieces are then turned inside out - so the front of the fabric is now on the outside.

5. When all the triangles have been stitched and turned inside out, press them again so they form nice flat and neat little triangles!

6. Organise the tape you want to hang the triangles from, I went for a natural coloured twill tape - but there are lots of different coloured and patterned tapes depending on the theme of your bunting.  I made sure the tape was quite wide (about 2cm) and thick enough to support the weight of all the fabric pieces.  Measure the length you need the tape to be depending on your room size (or wherever it's to be hung) and make sure you include extra to allow the bunting to drape. 

7. Then pin each triangle onto the tape, making sure you get a mix of different colours and patterns dispersed along the tape length.  To do this I placed the top (open) part of the triangle halfway up the width of the tape and then folded the tape over, this way you should have an even amount of tape on either side of the fabric triangle (about 1cm each side) and when pinned the triangle should be firmly attached to the tape.  I also left about 10cm of tape at each end free of triangles to allow for hanging.

8. All you need to do now is to stitch the tape to the triangles using the sewing machine.  Et Voila!  Your own bunting is completed!