Pin Banner

A lovely, quick project to share with you today.  A few months ago my son received a small pin for his participation in stage crew and over spring break he did a lettering project to earn a high school letter for drama!  He's devoted many hours to the crew this year (at least as many as I have to quilting) and we're so proud of him.  He doesn't want a letter jacket, but he does want a special way to display his awards in his room so I offered to make him a pin banner.

He won't get the actual letter until sometime in May, but when he does all I have to do is sew it on and he'll have a wonderful keepsake.  Since he's very artistic too, we made this into a group project.  We looked at different examples of banner shapes and sizes online and he was able to measure a letter that was on display at his school.  From there, he made me a construction paper template of exactly what he wanted.

He was thorough enough to give me actual angle measurements and lengths, but I just used his shape as a template to cut out a red pentagon exactly the same size as his model.  I then cut off about an inch across the top for my black header section and put a black border on the entire thing - 2" across the top and 1" on all the other sides.  I trimmed the non-top sides to 5/8" after they were sewn on.

I made the hanging loops by folding a 12"x1" piece of fabric in half lengthwise and ironing it flat so there was a crease  in the center.  Next, I unfolded the fabric and folded the raw edges in to this center crease and then ironed it again.  Finally, I folded it in half and ironed it a final time.  This makes a nice, sturdy piece of fabric (four layers!) that is stiff without interfacing or raw edges.  I ran four lines of stitching along the length to hold it together (you really only need one but the others were for decoration), then I cut it into three equal pieces to make the loops.

Once I was done making the loops, I pinned them into place and then brown-bagged the entire banner!  This is why I added the black border onto the red, it looks like there is a binding around the entire banner but I didn't have to mess with non-square angles.  I did a few lines of straight-line quilting across the black part at the top to give extra support to the loops, then switched to red thread and ditch stitched next to the black.  I didn't want to stitch on the black because I wanted it took like real binding.  After that, I just had to hand-stitch my turning hole closed and it was finished!

I took this picture before I buried all my thread ends, but you can see that they are basically the same!  Best of all, it got the teenager stamp of approval!

Making this pin banner was my monthly goal for March and I'm linking up my successful finish at Elm Street Quilts.