I’m hoping that a Doper with sewing savvy, a trait sadly lacking in myself, can help me out.
I teach a Sunday School class, and we are supposed to make a hanging banner for All Saints Day. It’s just a flat banner, to hang from a crosspiece, or be carried in a processional.
The theme for our class will be St. Patrick. I envisioned a green background with some symbols of the guy, a harp, a shamrock, bishop’s crook, etc. Nothing fancy.
But I don’t want the stitching to show on the back of the banner. So I guess it needs a lining, but I don’t know how to do that. Have any sewing Dopers ever done a banner? Got any advice? If there was some way to securely attach the decorations, without the stitching showing on the back, I’m open to that too.
If there is a pattern you can share, or a site to point me to, whatever, I need help!!! I’ll bake you cookies even!
Well, in the past I have done felt. All we did with those was sew the edges back, and glue images on the front.
But this time I was thinking of something like fabric, because actually we are doing two. One will be a gift to a Sunday School class in Georgia(the church is named St. Patrick’s), and I thought it might be a good idea to have something that could be cleaned if necessary.
FairyChatMom, what kind of fabric is best for backing? The same as the front?
Just in case your sewing skills are totally nonexistent, sis – you put the two “right” sides facing each other, sew around the edges, leaving a gap of a few inches, then turn it inside out (which is actually right-side out), and sew the gap by hand.
What Twickster said. Think of the banner as a pillow case (a long skinny one), where you sew the opening closed. If you don’t want to learn an invisible stitch for that, you could close it with Velcro or snaps.
Oh now that is cool! I think I get it! And the open top doesn’t matter, because I have to attach loops for hanging anyway. And I can hide the horizontal stitching at the top with some kind of fancy ribbon or something. I’m not a great machine sewer, but I can do nearly invisible hemming by hand(it’s the only sewing skill I’ve got!)
The hollowness, I guess you’d call it, of the banner could be fastened together with individual stitches hidden in the decorative pieces on front.
I’ll take any more Dopers want to add, but you guys already are great. I feel a load off of my shoulders I do!
