#187 Make DYO Pennants out of a Bed Sheet

Remember that bed sheet I made the snowman dress out of for my daughter? I have cut some more pieces out of the fabric to make some pennants/flags, a skirt (which I'll blog about later), and some more dresses (another later blog post, but much later since those are still pieces and haven't been stitched yet.)

These Decorate Your Own (DYO) pennants are really simple to make. Since I am not planning on washing these and they are just play things, I did not hem all the sides. And you could do this as a no sew project if you use heat & bond to adhere the sleeve or some fabric glue would work too.

I chose to sew the sleeve. First I cut out a pennant triangle in the size I wanted. Then I folded over the edge where the sleeve will be stitched. I stitched across the top, which would ensure that the pennant would be held on to a pole and then stitched down the length of the side, creating the sleeve. Finally I trimmed the excess from the bottom of the sleeve.

You could leave your flag as it is with just the fabric, but we chose to try out a new fun "tie-dye" technique using permanent markers and rubbing alcohol. This was a fun way to get the kids involved in creating their own designs on their flags and letting them use two items with supervision they usually never get to touch.

First draw your designs and pictures on your flag with permanent marker. Next using any eye dropper folled with rubbing alcohol, saturate the markered designs and sit back and watch as the ink spread and separates. It's fun to see how some other colors come out of the original color as it spread. It's also neat to see how the colors mix together when they spread together.

Don't worry, as the rubbing alcohol dries it will no longer have a wet circle like it does in the above picture. If you look at the ones to the left, you can see their colors have already spread and they are dry.

We did this activity as part of a playdate we had today and it was a lot of fun!

And then - HAVE A PARADE! or hang it up as decoration or use it as your official club/fort flag or whatever other hundreds of ideas your kids can come up with. They have great imaginations!