How to make a pennant garland

by Michelle on February 3, 2010 in Accessories, DIY, Entertaining, Kids, Textiles

Here’s one rea­son why my boyfriend is a killer catch—his charm­ing lit­tle col­lec­tion of old pennants.

IMG_0525

My boyfriend clearly has a nos­tal­gic streak.

Pen­nants are a fan­tas­tic cot­tage acces­sory; they add so much his­tory and char­ac­ter. And although I love these ones, I’d love to be able to dis­play them in a less clunky way. Sure those push pins stuck through the dry­wall do the trick, but they’re fairly short on style, aren’t they?

A style solu­tion found me last week when I went to a baby shower that my friend Cait Sains­bury, a pas­sion­ate Geor­gian Bay cot­tager, hosted at her home here in Toronto. The dec­o­ra­tions were so cute and hit just the right note for the occasion:

IMG_0497

IMG_0501

She got the idea for this craft from the blog Lovely Morn­ing. In her words:

I got the fab­ric with my mom at a quilt store. They had small squares that were two or three bucks a piece, and we got maybe eight flags out of each square.  I put them together on my mom’s sewing machine.  We cut the flags so they were eight inches across, and I think they were around ten or eleven inches long. We slid them into bias bind­ing tape (basi­cally rib­bon folded in half length­wise) and then I sewed them up! The cut­ting took a while, but the sewing was quick.  You could dou­ble­side the flags to make it a bit more per­ma­nent, but I didn’t… The whole thing prob­a­bly took me about two hours.”

Kudos to you Cait! Putting aside the fact that a string of these pretty flags would be a handy thing to have stashed away in a cot­tage drawer for sum­mer birth­days and such, I think this would work beau­ti­fully as an easy way to dis­play the pen­nants. (It my killer catch will allow it, of course.)

  • Share/Bookmark

8 comments

{ 1 trackback }

Rah rah for pennants! - CottageLifeStyle
February 11, 2010 at 10:35 am

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

1 mags February 3, 2010 at 11:21 am

yes indeedy…anyone with those is indeed a killer catch. How bout not sewing them but just tying them onto another string…jute or maybe a gor­geous ribbon…I have seen 4 on a rib­bon tied across a head­board in a swoop.…they looked great…I mean Santa’s Village!!!!Helooo

Reply

2 Ashley February 4, 2010 at 4:28 pm

Cait is one fantab­u­lous host! What a lovely sister-​​in-​​law to put some much home­made effort into a baby shower… Made all the dif­fer­ence. Yay Cait! And yay for those of us who were there to enjoy the evening. Nice post, Michelle. :)

Reply

3 mags February 5, 2010 at 9:04 am

just saw another idea in a cot­tage bedroom.…there was a shaker clothes rack on the wall, very sim­ple with pegs along it. Then there was a string tied from peg to peg with a lit­tle droop between each peg and the pen­nants were clothes­pinned onto the string.

Reply

4 debb February 5, 2010 at 10:37 am

I’ve got about a half dozen or more of this style pen­nants at our camp. I think most of them are from Hol­land. My Mom had col­lected them on our trip there in 1960ish. One of them is a small blue Cen­ten­nial pen­nant from Expo ’67. I’ve got them hang­ing above the sauna win­dow, as a sort of valance. You’ve inspired me to take a photo of them!

Reply

5 mags February 6, 2010 at 10:24 am

ok one last stab.…because pen­nants are meant to be viewed hor­i­zon­tally how about tying them with their tabs to a stick or a dowel and plac­ing the dow­els in a nice vin­tage jar like a good sized mason jar with the sil­ver col­lar still attached

Reply

6 Michelle February 6, 2010 at 11:45 am

Mags, I like that idea! And it gives me a rea­son to go shop­ping for some really cool mason jars. :)

Reply

7 mags February 6, 2010 at 4:38 pm

do NOT pay more than 10 cents.….if need be call and I will pro­vide :) :)

Reply

Leave a Comment

Previous post: Unhappy Hipsters

Next post: All quiet on the blog!

Copyright © 2010 CottageLifeStyle, Quarto Communications Ltd, All Right Reserved