A Birthday Banner

When my sister planned my Dad's 90th birthday party, and my sister-in-law and her husband agreed to come and provide the food (pictures at http://cherylandnorris.blogspot.com/2014/08/dads-90th-birthday-celebrated-with-lots.html ) I started to feel pretty bad - what was I doing for the party?

Since I am a far better quilter than cook I followed a model set by Dorry, and made a celebratory banner.

That above photo taken during set up doesn't show the banner's details so here are a few photos I took while working on it.

Each background piece was cut 8x8.5 inches. The font is sized so the largest letters fit with a good margin.  I fused the letters in place, edged them in a tiny buttonhole stitch, then rounded the lower corners with a template.  The two spaces in the message were filled with pennants - one has a trombone while the other is a print Dorry gave me of New Zealand postage stamps because Dad has collected stamps his whole life.

 

The letters were quilted on wool batting on a single piece of backing (Thank you Sherrye those glittery daisies were perfect for this application!)  The variety of dense quilting fills I used made the letters stand out in 3-D.

 

I took this next  photo for Joyce before I had the binding on so she could see she would have no trouble coordinating the party decor with my work.

 

I bought a handful of new fabrics to have a few very contemporary prints in the mix, but mostly I used my stash, looking for bright colors and good contrast with some masculine feel.  I selected lots of shirting stripes along with a couple of prints that reminded me of my father's pajamas.  I used shirt buttons Alice of the Mountain Jam Circle gave me to trim out the tops of the letters.

I attached the binding by machine on the front as I usually do, then wrapped it to the back and machine stitched in the ditch - which I have never done before.  You are looking at the back of one letter on the top, and the front of the one with the striped fabric. 

Attaching the binding went easily once I figured out I just had to use a lot of pins to make sure the edge stayed where my stitching could catch it.  I was having trouble picking the binding color till Flickr Friend "Pinkdeenster" weighed in - thanks for the push, the green stripe is perfect!

The hardest part of this project was working with the wild combination of colors and prints.