I love the look of little fabric pennants strung up and they are so easy to make. These are great in children’s bedrooms with their names or you can use them for special celebrations or even to represent your favorite sports team. They are so cute and can be used anywhere and because they are fabric they can be washed and stored and won’t tear and look all beat up.

Okay, let’s go!

Materials Needed
1 charm pack of your choice OR 5 inch squares of fabrics of your choice*
5 inch square of scrap cardboard or cardstock
Double-fold bias tape (store-bought or homemade)
Heavy weight interfacing
Pinking shears
Thread
Sewing Machine

*Note: You can totally make these bigger or smaller. Just adjust your fabric square size accordingly.

Step 1: Optional Â Embellish Your Squares

Because I was using these to display names, I went ahead and added the letters to my squares before I put anything else together. If you are leaving your pennants plain you will want to skip this step.

I used my handy embroidery machine to appliqué a little white oval and to stitch the letters onto my squares. You can add your letters/decoration however you choose. I’m not going to include appliqué instructions in my tutorial…you can find dozens with a simple Google search. But I will show you how I set everything up.

For the record, my appliqués were about 1” x 2”.

Find the center on your piece of fabric.
Measure down about 2 inches from the center and mark with an X. This should be the center of your design.
Add your letter!

Step 2: Prep the Squares

Select which squares from your charm pack you would like to use. You will need two for each pennant: one for the front and one for the back.
Following the manufacturer’s instructions, attach the heavy weight interfacing to your fabric squares.
Make a triangle template. (I just used the cardboard backing from my charm pack.) Find the center on the bottom side and draw straight lines from that center point to each of the top corners. Cut off the sides forming your triangle.
Place your new template on top of each “front” square and trace. You should only really need to trace the sides of the triangle.

Don’t cut yet!!

Step 3: Sew Pennants

Stack your front and back squares wrong sides together. You can pin if you want to, but I didn’t think it was necessary.
Top stitch along the lines you drew earlier. I used a triple stitch in a contrasting thread to make it stand out a bit more.
When you get to the tip of your triangle, leave the needle down and lift the presser foot to rotate your square.
Now, take your pinking shears and trim about a 1/4 inch away from your stitching line.
Yay! Pennants are done!

Step 4: Create Banner

Line up or measure out your pennants to determine how much double-fold bias tape you will need. I left about 8 inches of free space on either side to allow room for hanging.
Pin your triangles with the top edge sandwiched in the fold of the bias tape. Go ahead and pin all the triangles you will be using on that strip of bias tape.
Finish your bias tape ends: Open tape up all the way and fold right sides together. Stitch 1/4 inch away from the edge. Trim close to seam and turn right-side out again, folding back along the original fold lines. (Sorry, no pictures.)
Stich close to the open edge all the way across the bias tape.
Now your banner is finished!
One last thing I did was add a tiny bias tape bow to the girl banner, just to add some interest. I simply finished the ends of a scrap of tape as before and stitched the open edge closed. Then I tied it into a sweet little bow and hand-stitched it to the space between names.

Step 5: Finito!

And there you go…cute fabric pennants to string up in your child’s room, your living room or your next tailgate.

Come by sewinharmony.com to see more pictures and check out my other tutorials!

And I would love to see your creations! If you make a banner using this tutorial, please upload a couple pics to my new Flickr Group.