Our Christmas banner 2013

Here is our craft group's finished Christmas banner. We had lots of lovely comments from members of the church on Sunday and everyone in the group is really pleased with how it's turned out.

The background is made of 2" squares of blue and green fabrics with Bondaweb on the back of each one and then ironed in place. We used a LOT of Bondaweb!

The star is made from gold fabric which was also used to bind the edges of the banner and looks very festive. As we are beginners to making banners there are lessons learned from every one we make. This time I could have used much thicker gold cord as the star's rays.

And , of course, we had to have sheep on the banner this year. Why sheep? Our church have a knitted sheep trail around our town to encourage people to come to a Christmas church service. Some of the kids in our church have made a fantastic video to promote the sheep trail. I'm not technically minded and can't get the video to appear on here , but you can see it on YouTube HERE.

A Christmas banner design - with added sheep

Our Create group has started working on a banner to hang in the church over Christmas. We have a fun project going on at the moment where lots of people in the church have knitted sheep (there are 30) all from the same pattern. 24 sheep will be hidden around our town in the style of a treasure hunt and 6 will be in various churches. This is all happening around Christmas to encourage people to think about coming to church to celebrate Christmas.

I wanted to continue the sheep theme on our Christmas banner. This is the page in my sketchbook that I put together to show the members of the group what we are working towards. Using lots of squares of fabric to create the background is a great way to use up my fabric (I have quite a lot!).

The words on the actual banner will be in white not black.

I made the sheep using moulding paste and paint. The sheep on the finished banner will be made from felt pebbles.

My Friend - Wonder Woman!

I'm back! I am hoping to be blogging a lot more here now. I am entering a new stage in my life as my youngest child has just started school and it's a big adjustment. The photo above is of my lovely friend Claire and she has recently featured on The Salvation Army website in New Zealand. Here's the article. It gave me food for thought. I love Claire's phrase "holding things lightly". As I work out which way my artwork is going, in terms of work and church commitments, I am going to be giving serious thought as to what I will be holding onto lightly.

I have started a new creative group at church, called "Create". We will be meeting once a month and we will be working on church banners alongside anyone who wants to come along and bring along their own craft projects. I am hoping it will develop into a group that encourages, friendship, encouragement and inspiration (and some cake too!). We had our first meeting last night and we've made a start on our Christmas banner. It was a fun evening of chatting and cutting out fabric squares.

Creation story - a kids banner

I was helping out at Sunday school a couple of months ago and we were looking at the beginning of Genesis and my friend asked if we could make some kind of mural/banner to go in the room at the back of the church. This is where there are a selection of toys for younger children to play with during the service and we thought it could do with a bit of brightening up. 

I knew instantly what to do as I have been looking at this "make your own wall hanging" from Baker Ross for a while. The pack comes with 32 fabric squares which are ready hemmed and have holes cut in each corner. The pack also includes lots of brightly coloured ribbons to tie the squares together. I assembled lots of fabrics and cut out some squares as backgrounds and then used Bondaweb to trace and cut out some silhouettes of plants/flowers/fish/animals etc. I took the squares along to Sunday school and the kids (aged 4-7) added lots of details to the squares using fabric felt tip pens.

When I got the squares home I used fabric paint and foam stamps for the larger letters and StazOn ink with clear acrylic stamps for the smaller lettering. I based the words on The Message translastion of Genesis. I also used Bondaweb to iron on some thick calico backing onto the squares as the original fabric is quite thin and I wanted the finished banner to be quite robust.

I stitched on buttons and charms to the squares too. 

We had fun hanging it up. We aren't allowed to drill holes into the walls without special permission but luckily there were two existing hooks. The hooks are very, very high above a window. A friend and I scaled the ladder to hang two chains from the hooks which came down to below the window and then a curtain pole was hung from the chains. It's nearly straight too!

We've had lots of great comments about how well it's turned out and the kids are very proud of their handiwork.

Romans 12 v 12 (and a PVA fabric resist)

We had a Women's Day at our church this weekend and the verse from Romans 12 v 12 was used on the day with the theme of Hope. The day went really well with over 130 people coming along to it.

I had fun making the banner as I tried out a new resist technique. I started with a white piece of fabric and then I painted the large words using a cheap kids PVA glue (labelled "washable") and let it dry completely. I pinned the fabric up on the wall and projected the words on to it so that they would be neat, but I stuck bin bags to the wall behind the fabric as I was worried I would glue the whole thing to the wall!

The next step was to cover the banner in fabric paint, and I was really pleased with how it turned out as it reminded me a little of a Kandinsky painting. I painted some white fabric paint onto some bubble wrap and printed some circles with it.

When the paint was dry I gave it a quick iron and then left it to soak in tepid water in the bath for half an hour and then scrubbed off the PVA glue. I was so happy when I saw it had actually worked! Then I washed and dried it in the washing machine / tumble drier.

I had some members from my banner team come round to my house and help cut out the black letters which we ironed on and then I pinned it together with very heavy calico on the back to give it some weight so it will hang nicely. I then stitched around the white circles - I love how this looks, even though you can't really see it in the church setting.

I bound the edges with red fabric and had some help hanging it up in church (It's up so high!).

I've had some lovely comments back from church already and so now my thoughts are turning to a design for Easter which we can work on as a group.