Eighteen Eclipse Buntings in Thirty Days

Because it's very important to teenagers that you stay humble, my own teenager was quick to inform me that, despite the unexpected and fleeting popularity of my handmade eclipse buntings in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, I was not, and likely never would be, "viral."

Whatever. I still enjoyed my brief moment in the #girlboss sun!

I also finally finished The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel while I sewed, ending up with exactly 8 minutes left in the series finale at the moment that I cut the last thread on my last bunting, so that's yet another big accomplishment.

Now I'm watching that Duggar documentary series while I sew marble maze fidgets, and hoo-boy is THAT a wild ride! I did watch that show back in the day, when I was more entertained by secondhand cringe than I am now, although my REAL secondhand cringe favorite was Jon and Kate + 8. I could still happily endlessly chew over every single one of those episodes, snarking away about all the horrible adults. Remember the time that the family got a free trip to Disney World and then they got free ice cream and Kate wouldn't let the kids eat it? Or when they got the free trip to the Crayola Crayon hands-on place and she wouldn't let them do most of the activities? I'm STILL made on the kids' behalf!

I definitely didn't do any of the things that I probably should have done when blessed with a suddenly popular (not viral! Never say viral, at least not to a teenager!) listing. I'm pretty sure I should have done... something to further market or build on or... something. So maybe I didn't exactly #girlboss after all, lol. Oh, well! I mostly gave up my #handmade #girlboss dreams back when I gave up craft fairs.

Sewing all those bunting orders was really fun while it lasted, though! 

P.S. I actually wrote a tutorial for this bunting, so you can make your own!

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Sew a Solar Eclipse Bunting from Stash Fabric

 

I originally published this tutorial on Crafting a Green World.

This solar eclipse bunting ensures clear skies for April 8!

Hey, who’s got a sewing machine and a total solar eclipse happening in her literal backyard this Spring?

I mean, maybe you, but DEFINITELY me!

Y’all, I am REVVED UP for this solar eclipse. I have been excited about it for nearly a decade by now, and ESPECIALLY excited about it for the last seven years! I’m going to have a yard full of people, I’ve got enough eclipse glasses for everybody, there will be four different kinds of lemonade on offer, and there will be solar eclipse decorations if I have to sew every single stitch myself.

Which, considering that Party City doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo, I probably will!

My first official decoration is this solar eclipse bunting sewn from upcycled blue jeans and stash fabric. Y’all know how much I love buntings, so this choice shouldn’t surprise you. And thanks to the easy templates I used and my sewing machine’s superpower that is the zigzag stitch, I was able to take this bunting from concept to completion in half an afternoon. Here’s how!

Here’s what I used to make this bunting, but remember that I sewed entirely from my stash. So if you’ve got something different in YOUR stash, go ahead and use what you’ve got!

• bunting templates. I folded an 8.5″x11″ piece of paper into an isosceles triangle for the pennants, and a wide-mouthed Mason jar lid ring for the suns and moons. For the total eclipse flare, I traced a sun onto the fabric, then drew the flares by hand around it.
• fabric. I used denim (specifically all-cotton old blue jeans) for the pennants, stash flannel for the suns, and stash Kona cotton for the moons. The eclipse flare is upcycled from an old canvas tote bag.
• bias tape. Double-fold bias tape is my favorite shortcut for sewing buntings! I buy all my bias tape from Laceking on etsy, but you can DIY this, as well.
• sewing, cutting, and marking tools. I used my Singer Heavy Duty 4411 and a universal needle for this project, but any sewing machine should be able to handle denim plus a couple of layers of cotton-weight fabric. Sharp fabric scissors are handy for cutting out details in the appliques, and I like my Frixion pens for marking, as they erase with the heat from an iron.

Step 1: Create the templates and cut out all the fabric.

I cut seven pennants out of old blue jeans using the isosceles triangle template that I cut from a piece of 8.5″x11″ paper. Because this piece is decorative, you can even use parts of the jeans with too much wear to reuse otherwise. In the photo above, check out the pennant at the top of the photo–can you see the worn-out knee there? You won’t even notice it in the completed bunting!

To make the suns and moons, I cut six yellow circles and seven black circles using a wide-mouth Mason jar lid ring as my template.

To make that eclipse flare that will be part of the center pennant, I upcycled an old striped canvas tote. I traced the sun template where I wanted the flare to be centered, then traced the pennant around it so that I could hand-draw the flare to fit the pennant.

Step 2: Applique all the Sun pieces.

I put yellow thread in my sewing machine, and set it to a zigzag stitch with a length of 2 and a width of 3. I eyeballed the placement of the suns, laying out all the pennants in a row so I could make sure that they matched, then appliqued them to the pennants.

Appliqueing the flare to the pennant required a bit more finesse, but a confident beginner should be able to do it. Just go slowly and don’t forget to make sure the needle is down when you rotate the fabric.

Step 3: Applique the Moons to the pennants.

I switched out the thread in the sewing machine to black, and went ahead and stitched the moon to the center of the flare, since I knew exactly where it was supposed to be.

To place the rest of the moons, I laid out the entire bunting on the floor so I could eyeball the whole thing at once.

If you’re in the Northern hemisphere for the 2024 eclipse, you’ll be facing South, and the Moon will be coming from the West, so we read this bunting from right to left. The Moon passes across the Sun on a diagonal from top right to bottom left. I placed the Moon pieces on each pennant to mimic the process of the eclipse, roughly trying to make them symmetrical without getting too pedantic about it.

Using the same sewing machine settings, I appliqued all the Moons to the pennants. Notice that the Moon goes off the pennant a few times. I trimmed all that away.

Step 4: Staystitch around the pennants, then add bias tape.

I switched back to yellow thread, then staystitched the perimeter of each pennant flag with a straight stitch at a length of 3. This will keep the denim from fraying beyond where I want it to, as well as stitching down the edges of the moons that I trimmed.

I measured and stitched shut approximately 12″ of bias tape, then started adding the pennants and stitching them into the fold of the bias tape. At the end of the pennants, I continued stitching the bias tape to itself for another 12″, then cut it.

I tied both ends of the bias tape into an overhand knot, and my bunting was finished!

My bunting is already installed over my nicest window. After April 8, there won’t be another total solar eclipse that hits the United States until 2033 (anyone want to meet me in Alaska to watch it?), but instead of putting this bunting into storage until then, I’m kind of thinking that I’ll find another place to install it permanently–perhaps on my porch? It’s too pretty not to look at every day!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Make an Upcycled Playing Card and Upholstery Sample Bunting

I originally published this tutorial on Crafting a Green World.

There's nothing like a bunting to make a festive occasion just that much more special. That's why my daughter wanted a bunting as part of the decorations for her recent Alice in Wonderland birthday party--and also, of course, she IS my daughter. It's possible that a love for buntings is expressed at the genetic level...

Knowing what I wanted to make, I sorted through my stash of potential crafting supplies that surely will be useful someday (this is also known as my "stash of trash") and hit the jackpot when I came across a partial deck of souvenir playing cards. You can't play a lot of games with a partial deck of playing cards, and you also can't recycle them--and if you're me, you apparently also can't bear the thought of simply tossing them into the waste stream, not when you might want to make a bunting out of them six years later!

The faces of the playing cards would work as-is in the bunting because playing cards are on-theme for Alice in Wonderland, but as for the backs... well, my daughter for some reason didn't want scenes from Yellowstone National Park in the 1980s decorating her party. Silly girl!

Instead, I turned to another super useful piece of trash, a giant book full of tacky old upholstery samples. These sample books are notorious for being snapped up at thrift stores by avid crafters with stars in their eyes, who then take them home and never, ever figure out a way to separate the samples from their glued-on paper backings.

There isn't a way, Friends. Stop breaking your hearts on the effort.

So you can't sew those upholstery samples into anything, because they have thick paper backings glued onto them (you'll never get that glue off! Stop trying!). What you CAN do, however, is cut and glue them, stencil and paint on them, and embellish the snot out of them. That's what my daughter and I did to make her upcycled playing card and upholstery sample bunting, and here's how we did it!

Directions

1. Cut Bunting Pieces Out Of The Upholstery Samples

Use a playing card as a template to trace the bunting pieces directly onto the back of each upholstery sample.

Cutting these pieces out is sort of a nightmare, at least for my own set of upholstery samples, because the glued-on paper backing doesn't cover the entire piece. I obviously can't use my fabric scissors to cut paper, and my paper scissors are too dull to cut fabric, so I had to use two different pairs of scissors for every piece, ugh.

2. Embellish as desired

The possibilities for embellishing buntings are practically infinite, but for this bunting, I wanted to spell out a welcoming message.

Stencils and paint to the rescue!

I have a very old-school Cricut on which I can cut letter stencils, but happily, a set of store-bought cardboard stencils that I already had on hand turned out to be perfectly sized for this bunting--yay! I traced each letter onto the front of an upholstery sample piece with black Sharpie.

Because this bunting isn't washable, you can use any kind of paint on it. My fabric paint is getting a little old, though, so I've been using it on any even remotely fabric-adjacent project lately so I can use it up and have an excuse to buy more.

3. Adhere The Upholstery Pieces And The Hanging Cord To The Playing Cards

You can use any type of hanging cord that you'd like for a bunting, from a kid-made yarn cord created on a knitting spool to store-bought bias tape. Bias tape actually would have looked really cute with this particular bunting, except that I filled nearly all of the available space with my letters, and bias tape would definitely have cut the tops off of some of them. Instead, I decided on simple brown twine, to be sandwiched between the upholstery fabric and the playing card.

You can also attach the two sides of the bunting pieces together in a number of ways. I seriously considered machine-sewing them together with a wide zig-zag stitch, but then my daughter happened by and got involved, and her solution to every problem is to hot glue it. So she hot glued it!

I wouldn't use a bunting that was hot glued outside in all weather, but it was perfect for a beautiful, mild birthday party day. Afterward, we hung the bunting in her bedroom, so that every time she looks at it she can remember what a wonderful time she had at her Alice in Wonderland birthday party!

P.S. Do you also have a book of wallpaper samples that you're wondering what to do with? You can make a bunting with those, too!

An Alice in Wonderland Birthday Party For She Who is Thirteen

I loved Syd's idea for her birthday party this year: an Alice in Wonderland party is sweet and elegant and perfectly-themed for my brand-new teen.

Especially one who loves to fuss with details and make everything as cute as it can be!

Above is Syd's test recipe for her birthday cupcakes. She tried out the cake mix that she wanted (Funfetti for the win!), the color of food dye (she was pushing hard for red but we're flat out so she tested pink, and she was happy enough with it that I didn't have to start the fight about trying to convince her to let me buy powdered strawberries or beets instead of gel dye--yay!), the color and make-up of spots (she tested Skittles and M&Ms, as well, but everyone thought that the piped-on dots of buttercream looked best), the candy caterpillar (sour gummy worms!), and the speech bubble cupcake flag (after she was happy with this basic design she went to Matt, and he had to go through two rounds of submissions before she approved his final digital design).

Here's the final version of party cupcakes!

Syd put so much energy into the dessert and the activities that she let me be in charge of the Mad Tea Party. I never remember to take photos when I'm busy, so this is the solo one that I took of my own party preparations:

It's petit toasts with cream cheese and parsley. It was DELICIOUS!

I also made tiny cream cheese and tomato sandwiches, tiny peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and tiny cherry tarts. I bought miniature powdered doughnuts, chessmen cookies, miniature spinach and ham quiches, and grapes and baby carrots and cherry tomatoes. I made something like the equivalent of two full-sized sandwiches per kid (even counting the kid who I figured wouldn't eat a thing), not counting all the other stuff, and still ended up kicking myself that I hadn't also thrown a big box of Bagel Bites into the mix as I later cleared away completely cleaned-off platters.

An afternoon of Red Queen Freeze Tag and Cheshire Cat Hide-and-Seek is apparently hungry work!

I also didn't get a great picture--shame on me!--of this beautiful bunting that Syd and I spent basically an entire day making:

It's super elaborate, upcycled from an incomplete deck of playing cards and upholstery samples. I used stencils to trace each letter in Sharpie and then painted the outline with fabric paint, and Syd colored the letters in, glued the fabric to the playing cards, and attached the hemp twine.

It took FOREVER, so long that all the other cute and time-intensive party decorations did not happen, but we both love it so much that it was worth it.

Matt did not love trying to set it up according to my picky instructions, but he's a very good sport on party days:

And see? Isn't it the perfect thing to welcome children to their Mad Tea Party?

The tea cups are mismatched ones from all the thrift stores in town, and the children's plates are paper, but the serving platters and saucers are my Mamma's china. I don't remember once eating off of it as a kid, but I adore using it for every possible occasion now that it's mine. When Matt suggested that setting up the Mad Tea Party on the driveway would work better logistically, however (and it would have!), I told him that we had to have it on the grass to give Mamma's china at least a fighting chance.

It all lived!

I should also tell you about the, um, "tea." It was not my shiningest moment. I promise that I started off intending to serve tea. Fruit tea, to be specific. But it was going to be very warm on the party day, and Syd didn't want to serve hot tea. Fair enough, right? I told her we could make iced fruit tea, and offer honey and sugar cubes (in little pots!!!!) to sweeten it, but then Syd insisted that she wanted it pre-sweetened with simple syrup, and I was all, "If you want sugar-sweetened iced fruit-flavored tea, why don't we just make Kool-Aid?"

And so we did, sigh. I swear, ten kids drank something like two gallons of the stuff in a four-hour party. Whenever I brought out the pitcher for refills, I took to asking them if anyone wanted more hyper medicine, and they always clamored that they did, and then they gulped it down and proceeded to prove to the entire neighborhood that it was working very, very well, indeed.

Ah, well. You're only young enough to guzzle Kool-Aid without a second thought for such a little while.

For the craft (because there always has to be a craft!), we recycled a project back from the days when Syd and a pal planned and hosted a party to earn their Girl Scout Junior Social Butterfly badges. As their craft, they thrifted white tea cups and let the party guests decorate them with paint pens. You just have to send home instructions with the party guests that they need to let them sit for 24 hours, then bake them in the oven according to the directions on the package--30 minutes at 350 degrees, for these.

Strangely, I don't remember those younger girls being so, hmm, well, creative as these older girls are:

Thirteen is such a big year, and this sweet kid has already always felt everything so big. You'll never find someone with a bigger heart, and it's my hope for her that her love for and trust in those around her is always returned in kind:

On this day, surrounded by friends, I surely know that it was:

Bunting: Before and After

before (well, sort of--the pennants certainly didn't measure and cut themselves!)

and after:

I sewed this bunting to donate to the Bloomington Area Birth Services, to use in a photo shoot and then to hang in their offices after. The request was for "pastels", of which you can imagine that I have few, and I can't say that I'm sad to have far fewer after this project. The bunting itself is, however, as buntings always are, absolutely gorgeous.

It's also been a week for billions of Waldorf ring candles, some smash book layouts, an upcoming project with Snapfish, and a newly sewn shower curtain, complete with the button holes that I now know how to make...yay!

Name/Nickname Birthday Bunting

What do you do when you want to make a name bunting as a birthday present for a kiddo who goes by her nickname?

I mean, you want the bunting to last, so what if one day she doesn't want to use her nickname anymore and only wants to go by her given name?

But what if in the future she doesn't care for her given name, and only likes her nickname?

Well, you can make her a bunting with her given name on one side--

And on the other side, her nickname:

That way, depending on the kiddo's mood, she can turn the bunting around--

or around--

--or around:

Oh, dear:

If the kid's nickname doesn't center perfectly on the back side, you can add a star, or a heart, or some other little icon. And then you apparently have to go make some for your own kiddos!

Construction and Deconstruction

Constructing a bunting for a local business:

 With breaks to tear up this old globe for a new project TBA:

Both should be finished today, barring tantrums by small children or the unavailability of latex primer.

More Wallpaper on the Wall

Buntings are on my mind for some reason. Here's my newest vintage wallpaper bunting in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, made with my much-treasured vintage wallpaper and my much-, much-treasured vintage beads:

While I'm on the subject, I also have in mind buntings made from comic books, buntings made from dictionary pages, buntings made from Shakespeare, and child-decorated buntings.

I like where this is going.

Bye-Bye, Birthday Bunting

This past weekend I spent sewing up a personalized bunting from my pumpkinbear etsy shop and sending it off to its new home in Alaska!My favorite thing about doing custom sewing for people is that I'm usually called upon to use color combinations that I normally wouldn't consider--you never could have told me before this project that I would like the combination of lime green, lavender, and rose......but after sewing with it, I love that combination! It's youthful and playful and fun without being too childlike--the colors are a little unexpected together, but the fact that they're all pretty light versions of themselves allows them to pop without being garish:So now, of course, I'm all about the birthday bunting. I'm thinking of adding a listing just for a pick-your-own-colors Happy Birthday bunting in my shop (with a simple symbol on either end as well as in between the words----it comes to 16 pennant flags), as well as sewing up a few in some more traditional colors to be able to sell instantly and to show at craft fairs, and I've also, of course, been planning out some bunting ideas for my own girls' happy summer birthdays.

And of COURSE each girl has to have her own. Sydney's I'm thinking of doing in rainbow colors, but I asked Will to draw me a design of what she'd like her birthday bunting to look like:Oh, dear--where to even begin?