Birthday banner

My little girl is about to have her first birthday (where did this past year go?) and I thought it would be fun to have a birthday banner to take her picture in front of. Ya know, maybe do it every year and make a little tradition out of it. At first, I was gonna just buy one, but when I went to Etsy I saw that they were kind of on the expensive side. So, I thought I would try and  make one myself. I know I have mentioned on other posts that I don't really have much knowledge or experience sewing, but that doesn't seem to stop me from trying :)

Going to the fabric store can be a little intimidating for me. It is kind of like trying to shop at Marshall's or T J Maxx. Just racks and racks of clothing (or fabric) that you have to search through to find one item you might like. I am more of boutique shopper. A smaller selection with two or three of each item grouped together. MUCH less stressful for me :). So...after I walked up and down a few aisles I came across a section that had this

A pre-cut bundle of fabric! I decided that was the best way for me to go because I probably would have been in the store for 5 hours trying to decide which fabrics went best together.

When I was looking for banners to buy I saw that one woman had cut her letters out of felt so I decided I was gonna do that too. Felt is pretty cheap. It was only like .25 per sheet and I only needed 6 sheets and the fabric bundle was $6. MUCH better than the $45 it would have cost me to buy online.

OH and another thing...I don't have any letter stencils. I looked into buying some at JoAnn's, but they were 15 dollars. My friend that I was with recommended that I just open a word document, pick a font I like, blow it up and trace it onto white paper off of my computer screen (Thanks Kim!). So that is what I did and it cost me nothing. I felt like a dork not thinking of that myself.

Here is the finished product. There are some definite flaws here and there, but overall I think it turned out pretty good.

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