You will need

Banner templates (click to download)

A craft knife or scalpel

Cutting mat

Sticky back vinyl

1 fat quarter of fabric

Some lightweight interfacing

An iron

Fabric paint and a paintbrush

Pins and your fabric scissors

A 22cm piece of thin dowel, with the edges sanded to smoothen a little

Some baker’s twine

Step 1

Stick your piece of vinyl to the cutting mat with some washi tape (this is easier to remove than something like sellotape). Then stick the word template on top and very carefully cut out the letters with a craft knife. Watch your fingers! Keep the outer edges of the letters nice and neat – there’s no need to worry about the actual letters as they will be discarded. When you have cut out all the letters, leave the backing paper attached.

Step 2

Take your fabric (pre-pressed) and fold it in half, wrong sides together. Position the banner template and pin in place before carefully cutting it out. Notice that I have left an extra couple of inches at the top – you’ll need to do this too.

Step 3

Cut out one piece of interfacing the same size as the banner template (no need to add the extra couple of inches at the top of this). Take the front piece of banner fabric and attach the interfacing to the reverse – make sure you have the bobbly side of the interfacing matched up with the fabric, and that you iron on the smooth side. Otherwise you’ll make a mess on your iron! Trim the edges if any excess is overlapping, and then fold over the extra bit of fabric at the top and place right side up on your cutting mat.

Step 4

Now for the fun bit – painting! Make sure you do this on your mat or another protected surface, as the paint will soak through to the other side. Peel the backing off the vinyl and position the template on your fabric (the bit with the interfacing). Make sure that you take time to ensure that there are not gaps between the fabric and the template, as you don’t want the paint to run and mess up your lettering. Use a little bit of paint and start in the middle of each letter, working it into the fabric.

Step 5

When you have painted all the letters, leave it to dry for 5-10 minutes and then carefully peel off the template. If you let the paint dry completely it will be more difficult to take it off, as the paint may crack as you do so. Once removed, leave it to dry completely before fixing according to the paint instructions.

Step 6

Once the paint is dry, the banner can be constructed. Place the front and back pieces right sides together and pin around each edge. Stitch along the side edges, but not the top.

Step 7

Trim the seam allowance to about half a centimetre, and the cut a few little notches along the curved edges – this will just help to avoid bunching up inside when you turn it inside out.

Step 8

Turn the banner inside out and press.

Step 9

Trim about 1.5cm off the top of the banner to remove rough edges and loose bits of cotton. Then fold over the top edge, tucking underneath to create a gap for the dowel to fit through. Check that the dowel does fit and then stitch along the bottom of the fold, close to the edge.

Step 10

The final thing to do is to add the baker’s twine to be able to hang the banner. Tie the end of the twine to the dowel to pass it through the gap in the top, and untie it again once it is through. Measure the length of twine (as long or short as you like) and then cut to length. Tie the ends together and then pull it through so that the knot is hidden.

Ta-dah! Your banner is ready to display You can make banners for all occasions – this is one I made for a friend’s birthday last month, which used this cool balloon fabric and gold fabric paint:

If you’ve enjoyed this tutorial, you can also watch the video on my YouTube channel here:

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If you have a go at this then I’d love to to see what you make! Share on Instagram or Twitter and tag @hellohoorayblog using the hashtag #hellohooraymakes

The post Painted fabric banner appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

When we planned our new kitchen, we knew that it would be a lovely light, bright space. Now that we’re well in to spring and the days are sunnier and longer, we’re really feeling the benefit of this! We knew that we’d have to get some blinds for the windows, and found one for the front one no problem (we just got a cream Venetian one, so it matches the front window in the living room). But the back windows are a little trickier – we used to have a roller blind in the existing window, but fitting something over the new door and window would be tough as there isn’t a lot of space. And I really wanted them to match, so it meant one thing: having a go at making them! 

It needed to be something that wasn’t bulky at the top, and we also wanted to retain as much light as possible so it needed to be fairly thin. Our old roller blind was a blackout blind, and we didn’t really want anything like that this time. I remembered that my parents used to have some net curtains on extendable rods that sat on little hooks, and this seemed like it would be the perfect thing. I had a look online and found these in Homebase (there are various lengths, which is helpful – although we did need to exchange one because the hooks add about half a centimetre in length on to each end, so bear that in mind!).  The blinds for the door and small window either need to be up or down, so I decided that I’d make some ties to tie them up. The larger window is in front of the sink and I like to look out when I’m washing up, so longer ties would be needed on this one. These are roll-up blinds (not roller blinds) so you have to roll them up by hand. Although this sounds a bit faffsome, it isn’t really – they take no time at all to tie up.

Geometric painted roll-up blinds: materials list

Fabric – I used 2 metres of white premium Kona cotton from Plush Addict

Fabric paints – I used 3 colours and got them from my local art shop

A paint brush

Sticky back vinyl – you can pick up a roll of this cheaply in Wilkinsons

A cutting mat and craft knife (or scalpel)

Sharp scissors and a rotary cutter

Bias binding – I used just under 5 metres of 25mm binding, and it was easier to buy pre-bought

Matching thread

An iron

Dowel – for the length of each blind

Step 1

Measure the inside of your window, making sure that you take measurements at the window itself (i.e. not at the wall). Cut your fabric to size, adding on an inch at the top and at the bottom, as well as each side, to allow for hemming. I used my rotary cutter to do this so that it would be neat.

Step 2

Make your stencil out of the vinyl – you can draw the design on the back and then cut it out if you like. I just made some triangle shapes, so it was easy to do freehand.

Step 3

Take your fabric and peel off the backing from one of the stencils, before sticking it on to the fabric where you want the shape to be. You’ll have to check the instructions on your fabric paint, but I needed to paint and then let it dry a little before ironing to fix it.

I decided to use one colour for each of my three stencils, and found that the easiest thing to do was to paint one shape then hang the fabric out on the line to dry, before fixing and then moving on to the next colour. This did involve a lot of running around between inside and outside, but I think that I ended up with neater shapes and well-fixed shapes because of it! I kept the triangles fairly far apart, and I like the simplicity of the design.

Step 4

Once the fabric is painted, you can construct the blinds. Fold and press the side seams to the correct width of your window. Pin in place and stitch along each edge.

Step 5

Next, place your extending rod at the top of the fabric to work out where the top hem needs to be. Fold over enough fabric to allow the rod to pass through freely, and then pin in place. Don’t stitch just yet!

Step 6

Take your bias binding and press it in half. Stitch all the way along to secure it, close to the edge. This will form the ties for the blinds, which need to be measured to check the length. Roll up your blind as if you were going to tie it up and place some of the binding underneath (see below). You need to work out how long each tie needs to be to be able to tie it up comfortably – for me, this worked out as 55cm long for the door and little window, and 125cm long for the large window. Remember that you need to make two ties for each blind! Pin each one where you want it to be, then remove the rod.

Step 7

Stitch along the edge of the hem at the top, securing the ties in place as you go. At this point, you might want to hang the blind to be able to measure where the bottom hem needs to go, before pressing and stitching that in place. Once you’ve done that, put your dowel in the bottom hem and the blinds are ready to hang!

It was really tough to get a decent photo of the blinds – taking photos of a window is difficult! The one above will give you some idea of how much light we have even with the blinds down. You can probably tell that this was taken on a really sunny day! (Sorry about the bin in the photo…). I took a few once it had got dark, so hopefully you’ll get a better idea of what they’re like from these:

This is the blind for the larger window – it’s easy to roll it up to the middle. Not sure if we’ll ever need to roll it right up, which is good because I can’t reach!

These geometric roll-up blinds turned out even better than I thought it would in my head, and it’s brilliant to still have the light during the day without the glare of the sun bouncing off all the glossy units in the kitchen! You could apply the painting and stencilling techniques to any project, as it’s really easy and fun to do. Have you made anything for your house recently?

You may also like…

See more of our kitchen build progress here:

Kitchen progress: part 3

Make your own geometric meal planner:

Geometric meal planner

Put a little geo into your stitching too!

Link stitch geometric hoop

Make an easy painted fabric banner:

Painted fabric banner

Post updated 18th March 2021.

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