I am obsessed with making buntings and garlands lately. I had several white on white vintage hankies with some minor damage to them and thought it would be beautiful to turn them into bunting.
Bunting Made from Vintage Hankies
Materials Needed:
About 8 Hankies or 16 half hankies (a mixture of edges looks romantic, crochet, lace, cutwork, embroidery)
12 feet of white ribbon, 1/2″ wide or more
Thread
Scissors
Sewing Machine
- Lace, crochet, cutwork edges
Hanky Collection
1. Iron and starch all the hankies. (Starch is optional, helps keep control of the fabric.)
2. Cut all the hankies on the diagonal across the center. You should then have 16 triangles.
Cutting Hankies
3. Sew a gathering stitch across all the hanky triangles at about 1/4″ from the top edge.
4. Pick a width to gather all the hankies. All my hankies were gathered to 7″ across. Pull the gathering thread on all the hanky trianges and evenly gather to your desired width.
Gathered Hanky Triangle
5. Press all the gathered hanky triangles flat at the gather and straighten them as much as possible. Remember you are gathering on the bias, so the fabric will have to be worked into position.
6. Now decide what order the hankies will be sewn to the ribbon and stack them in order.
7. With the ribbon, measure 12″ from the end and mark. Starting at the mark, sew your first hanky triangle to the ribbon. The wrong side of the ribbon will be face up as will the wrong side of the hanky.
8. Sew along the bottom edge of the ribbon. When you come to the end of the hanky, place your next hanky right next to it with a slight overlap. Keep sewing until all the hanky triangles are but 12″ from the end of the ribbon
Attaching Hanky Triangles to the Ribbon
9. At both ends of the ribbon fold over to make a loop for hooking when hanging. Sew the ribbon edge so they do not fray.
10. Trim the top edge of the hanky triangles above your stitch line to about 1/8″.
11. I left the back side with the raw edges showing. If you want to hide the raw edges, sew another 12′ long piece of ribbon to the back side of the first ribbon.
12. Press and now the bunting is ready to hang.
