Sewing the Flags

After my bunting sewing trials, I decided to attempt the final set. The first task was to figure out the different colour materials I needed to use. Since I didn't want two colour flags of the same colour next to each other, I needed to figure out the sequence of the portraits - I decided on this:

Most participants had given me more than one preference for their flag colours, so I chose the colours so that each colour flag would only appear once in the bunting:

Lora – Neon yellow material – black ink

Kristyna – Red satin – white ink

JC – White satin – red ink

Adam – Green satin – red/blue ink

Marcelo –Yellow satin – orange ink

Ania – (light) Blue satin – white/yellow ink

Redi – Dark blue – black ink

Motaz – Black satin – white ink

Nikita – Orange satin – blue ink

Livia – Hot pink satin – purple ink

The first job was to cut the material to size, making sure that there would be enough space around the print to allow for a complex stitch border.

Then I had to iron (my least favourite task) the material. The neon yellow fabic had a very strange triangle pattern - and I can't figure out why!

Then I pinned the fabric around the template size and stiched the seam with a running stitch.

I then turned the fabric inside out, folding the top to create a loop for the ribbon and stitched the border with the vine stitch.

I tried stitching some with a thread colour which would match the ink, but later decided this was perhaps not the best creative choice.

The sewing machine started playing up and the stitching became very messy - I'm not sure why, but when I took the bobbin mechanism apart and blew out al the dust - it worked fine again afterwards.

The sewing machine really didn't like the neon fabric (which was a different material from all the other colours) and kept dropping stitches. I figured out eventually if I held the fabric taught, it reduced the number of dropped stitches.

This wasn't perfect, but it was my third attempt and a masive improvement on the number of stitches dropped in the first and second attempts.

The flags didn't turn out perfectly identical (the satin fabric is very difficult to control) but I love the shiny surface and the detail texture provided by the stitching.

Guinevere saw the pile of flags and assumed that I had spent several days sewing them to make her a nice bed for a nap.