Make: Name Banner

By Designing Mom Jackie

Today's craft project is a name banner designed by Louise, a mother of two little ones (4 yrs old and 15 months) who lives in Oakland, California. Louise spends her days as an environmental policy researcher at a local think tank, but loves to delve into the domestic arts (sewing, knitting, gardening, etc.) in her spare time. Hard to imagine having any free time with her dance card, but Louise makes it happen!


We thought that this project would especially appeal to those of you out there with a stock pile of fabric lying around that you don't quite know what to do with. Takes about an hour (not including drying time) and the result is simply adorable.

Here are Louise's instructions:

1) After you sort through your fabric remnants (or visit your local fabric store), cut out uniform triangles (one for each letter). I chose two different fabrics for the flags and another for wrapping the cord.

2) Next, I did a zig-zag stitch around each one so that they would not unravel. If you don't plan to hang the banner on the wall, you could sew two pieces of fabric together for each flag.

3) Lay out the triangles and space them about an inch apart to see about how long the name will be. Then take a long strip of fabric roughly this length and about 3 inches wide and wrap it around a piece of cording. Stitch this in place, leaving an even amount of fabric hanging over on each side (using a zipper foot). I used some cotton cord I had for making piping, but you could really use anything - rope, ribbon, etc.. Trim this piece of fabric with pinking shears so that there was about a one inch flap on one side of the cord.

5) Sandwich the flags, evenly spaced, between this flap and stitched them in place.

6) The last thing I did was stamp the letters on the flags. Now that I have done it, I realize that you might want to do this first in case you mess it up. But, I was sort of winging it. I decided to stamp the letters using fabric paint. Since I did not have large format letter stamps, I carved simple block letters from rubber blanks that I had from the craft store. You could also do freezer paper stencils, embroidery, or applique letters. And, of course, you could include more flags than letters and add figures or motifs or anything.

7) Finally, I tied loops on the end of the cord to use for hanging.

Thank you for sharing, Louise!