Birthday Banner for Ben

My nephew turns 1 year old today. A whole year! It's a tad hard to believe. Considering I only got to see him 3 times during that year, he seems to grow so fast. Those Texans are coming up to Ohio over Labor Day for a belated birthday party and now that he's walking (!) I REALLY can't wait for them to come, even if the trip will be brief.

For Ben's first birthday, I wanted to make him something in addition to the other gifts we sent. Sewing for boys is difficult. They don't wear cute, frilly dresses or need little girl accessories. This year, I must make more of an effort to make things for him. There are a lot of good ideas out there so I should just get cracking. My first thought was a penant banner that said 'Happy Birthday' but that is a lot of letters! I shortened it to CELEBRATE instead. This was a great project also because I used fabric and ribbon from my stash.

I used a red pique cotton that had a little stiffness to it. I thought about also ironing on some fusib;e web but skipped that step and instead, used a white pique cotton to back each triangle so they would hang better and also for a bit more color variation.

My triangles were 6 inches wide and 9 inches long. A ruler and rotary cutter made cutting them out a snap. I printed and cut out the letters to be approx. 3 inches. I think the font I used was just Arial, bolded. Cutting out those letters was the most tedious step to this whole project. I don't have a fancy Silhouette, just good old-fashioned scissors.

The penants are red on one side and white on the other. I used a navy and white polka dot fabric for half the letters and a light blue and white stripe for the others. I stitched the triangles together and then sewed on the letters. Then, I took my pinking shears to the edges to help stop fraying and make them a little more exciting. Here's the C!

And here they are all laid out with Sadie standing guard. That other polka dot fabric is for a really excited furniture project. More on that in the future!

When all the penants were stitched, I sewed them to a 1" wide length of navy grosgrain ribbon.

And here is the finished project!

As a one year old, Ben probably won't find it nearly as exciting as the electric car he just got. But, I hope they'll hang it for him every year on his birthday and since I probably won't be there for those birthdays, he'll know I'm celebrating for him elsewhere.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEN!