{highchair fabric banner}

I can’t believe it.  It seems like just yesterday this little guy was born…

And now we’re less than three weeks away from celebrating his first birthday!  Yikes!

This mama is in party mode for sure.  There are so many fun ideas swimming in my head for his red, white, and blue bash (he was born just shy of Independence Day on July 3rd).  One such idea is a fabric birthday banner to wrap around the front of his high chair as he digs his little hands in his birthday cake.  I found a really helpful tutorial at Pretty Providence and for the pattern, I honestly just did a good ‘ole Google image search and printed one out that I liked.

To make a {highchair fabric banner}, you’ll need:

1/4 yd each of two coordinating fabrics (I chose a navy with stars and a red and white striped fabric) $3.00

1 sheet of white felt $.25

1 yd of coordinating ribbon  $2.00

coordinating thread

fabric scissors

iron/ironing board

sewing machine

*My supplies for the project were all found at Hobby Lobby and cost less than $6.00!

To get started, iron both of your 1/4 yards of fabric.  It’s just easier to work with nice, ironed fabric in my opinion!  And if you’re new to sewing, get used to ironing!  I think I’m going to need to relocate our rarely used iron from the master closet downstairs to the laundry room upstairs very soon.  Once the materials are ironed, trace your flag pattern on the wrong side of the fabric.  Measure your highchair first, it may be different than mine.  Our tray is about 1 yard around the front, so I needed five flags.  Therefore, I measured out ten pieces.  I had a good chunk of fabric left over too.

Use your fabric scissors or a rotary cutter to cut each flag out.  Pin like pieces of fabric to each other, wrong side out.  Don’t worry about pinning along the top of the flag, you will leave that part open!

{This is the order I’ll be sewing my flags together, but remember when sewing, sew with the wrong sides facing out!}

For the center flag, I wanted to embellish it a bit.  I free-handed a number 1 and cut it out of the white felt sheet.  I then used one of the fancier stitches on my sewing machine to attach the number and a scrap piece of the navy/star fabric to the center flag.  Remember, I’m a brand new sewing machine owner, so this is not perfect (but I’m pretty proud of it). 🙂

After all of the flags were sewn and flipped right-side out, I ironed them all again for nice, crisp edges.

 I also pinned and ironed the coordinating ribbon I’d be using at to actually make the banner.

To attach the flags to the ribbon, I simply laid out my measuring tape and skipped about an inch between each one.  I knew I needed the flags to cover about a yard to fit around the entire tray of our highchair.

Once I had the flags placed where I wanted them, I pinned the tops of each one between the fold of the ribbon, then got to sewing.  This part was super fast!  Soon, I had a beautiful, highchair fabric banner for my little guy’s birthday party!

I know it’s not perfect, but I love it and am so excited to use it for Jackson’s 1st Birthday!

He can’t wait to use it either!

Enjoy!

I’ve hit 100 “likes” on Facebook, so (as promised) there’s a fun giveaway starting this Friday, June 15th for all of my amazing readers!  Make sure to check back with me then for Favorite Pins Friday and my first Giveaway (and good luck)!

I’ll be linking up at these fantastic parties!