Sewing Bunting as a Beginner

I'd never had many opportunities to use a sewing machine before, but when I had I'd always enjoyed it, so I thought I would enjoy taking up sewing as a hobby. I liked the idea of making my own clothes as well as accessorises and things like project bags, but I obviously don't know much about using a sewing machine so I needed to find some good projects to use to learn.

My Mum recommended that I try sewing some bunting, it's a project she's done a number of times before to decorate her garden in the summer, so she sent me a link to the tutorial she had used and I decided to try it out. I wanted to make a small amount of bunting to put across the top of my bookcase, to add some colour to my craft room.

For this project I used a pack of fat quarters I had purchased from Aldi, it contained 6 fat quarters and was £3.99. I knew I would have plenty of fabric leftover for other projects too, as I only needed to make about 3 flags for enough bunting to go across my bookcase. I also needed ribbon, unfortunately my local haberdashery didn't have much choice, but I purchased the option which seemed most suitable.

I printed out the template from the tutorial and used it to cut out 3 pairs of triangles to use for the flags. I clipped the template to the fabric whilst I was cutting to make it easier, but it was still a little difficult to cut the fabric straight with scissors. I've since purchased a rotary cutter to try on my next project, as I'm hoping it will make it easier to cut straight lines. After this I was finally going to try out the sewing machine.

Initially I had a hard time using the sewing machine. I got thread jammed in it a few times when I made mistakes while threading it, I also had to unpick stitches a couple of times when the thread somehow got tangled and the fabric got bunched up, with four threads going through the fabric rather than two (I've still no idea how I managed this). I had some difficulties getting my stitching straight as well, but I think I started to get the hang of it eventually.

After a few mistakes I completed the 3 flags and was quite happy with them. I then measured the flags against the ribbon to get one in the middle and two 10cm away either side and pinned them in place. I found it quite awkward to sew the ribbon to the flags, due to needing to keep the ribbon folded down and straight, so it ended up taking me quite a long time to complete. I then folded the ends of the ribbon and sewed them to prevent fraying, I found this really fiddly to do so it ended up being not very neat.

Overall, after I got the hang of sewing the triangles I did quite enjoy making them and could've quite happily made more. If I were to do this project again I would purchase a different type of ribbon, as I think this would be much simpler with ribbon that stays folded more easily and is therefore more straightforward to sew. Due to the issues I had sewing the flags to the ribbon, the finished result isn't particularly neat, the ribbon clearly isn't folded perfectly in half in some areas. The bunting does still look decent and I will use it as I had planned, even if it has some flaws. In addition, I think I've learnt a lot from this which will help me with future projects.