Me Reading: Make a team banner for your team to carry at Opening Day Ceremonies.
Me at Soccer Field: Anyone want to be in charge of making the team banner? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller...Bueller?
Me Thinking: I guess I am making the banner. If I make it out of paper it might rain and the girls are going to get it all crumpled and torn..all that work for nothing. Man, if I am going to have to spend time making a banner I may as well make it out of material so that it will last a long time then we can put it up at all the games. Yeah...that makes perfect sense! Why would I spend two hours on something that we can only use one day and done. A banner made of material it is.
Sounds perfectly logical right? These ideas always do when I am talking to myself. I figured I'd get the girls to do some drawings, take their picture then print it out on transfer iron ons...and voila, cute team banner!!!
So I set out to Walmart to get all the things I needed for this little project a few Sundays ago. It gave me exactly 5 days to five days to finish before the big parade. 50 bucks later I had some material, some iron ons, and puffy paint.
First step was to stitch the material that would become the banner. I bought a heavy canvas and hemmed the two sides so that the material wouldn't run and then stitched a band at the top of the banner to be used to run a piece of rope through in order to hang the banner up. Easy part done.
Next it was time to do the lettering for our team name, "Red Unicorns." I typed each letter out in a cute DJ Inkers Font, then reversed each letter. I printed each letter out to use as a stencil. I was planning on making applique letters so I had to iron on the transfer onto the red material, then trace the stencils onto the backing then cut each letter out. After each letter was made, I had to place it on the canvas backing and iron each letter on. If this would have been a project that I wanted the applique to last a long time through washing I would have either zig zagged stiched along the edge of each letter (not an easy task) or used puffy paint to seal the edges--faster but not as pretty.
Next it was time to put the girls' pictures and art work onto the banner. I created a little vignette for each girl in a drawing program. I took a photo of their self portrait and paired it with the photo portrait I took of each of them at soccer. Once printed out on the transfer adhesive all I would need to do is iron it on onto the banner.
Well, it wasn't so easy. You have to apply a lot of pressure when ironing or the transfer doesn't come off in one piece. I learned the hard way after trying to iron on an image directly onto the banner. It came out ugly and I was irritated. Not one to put anything out there that's not pretty close to perfection I had to go back to Walmart to buy more material to cover up the mess...and that's when the craziness ensued...I decided that I would put all of the girls' vignettes on separate pieces of fabric then add them to the banner. This enabled me to be able to clean up any mistakes and would also enable me to give each girl their panel at the end of the season (maybe sewed onto a canvas bag). BUT it also created some problems...how would I adhere each panel to the banner? The crazy idea I came up with was to cut each panel with pinking shears then hand-stitch each panel onto the banner. It was crazy hard work but it gave the "look" of the banner a real homey feel.
To cap it all off I decided to have the girls put their hand print on a separate piece of material and then hand stitch that onto the banner as well.
It took me a good 5-6 hours to complete the banner and I was going crazy by the end of it. Trying to do the sewing while making sure the kids didn't wreck the house was a challenge. However, the pictures of the girls holding the banner are priceless and one parent told me, "I told my wife that the banner looked like something Martha Stuart would do." So I guess it was all worth it.
By the way, it POURED at the Opening Day ceremonies and some of the paper/paint banners were RUINED. Our banner got wet, got stepped on, dropped, and took a beating....but it still looks great and will be hung at our game this Saturday and for the next 8 Saturdays after that! :) I guess I am brilliant after all.
