Have Felt, Will Decorate

Delia and I decided this year to forgo the crepe paper streamers and instead make some decorations for her birthday that could be reused. These banners are the result of our first night's work. The big one is made from triangles we measured and cut out of a length of felt. Each is 5 inches wide at the top. They are machine stitched along with a piece of black ric-rac. Super simple, mega cute. I wanted to cut the felt triangles with pinking shears so they would have zig-zaggy edges to kind of echo the ric-rac, but alas, my Grandma's pinkers are plenty old and not as sharp as they used to be (much like me). They wouldn't cut the felt, so the edges of these pennants are just straight.
These little guys are made from scraps I had left over. They came out pretty awesome, for being all kinds of random. I did sort the triangles generally by size, and then stacked them so the littlest ones would be closest to the ends. Just overlap the triangles a little bit as you feed them through the machine and they come out strung together. I made little loop hangers for the ends out of pieces of felt, and stitched them onto the end triangles.
You could make the little doorway garlands from the notebook paper sized pieces of felt you can get at the craft store. I bought a little more than 2 yards of felt from JoAnns when it was on sale. About 6 dollars invested in it, tonight we used up less than 1/4 of my felt stash.

I am jazzed by how easy this little project was, once I brought my sewing machine down from the attic and got it all set up on the dining room table. Now that it is ready to go, I might have to round up some more colors of felt and make decorations for Thanksgiving and Christmas.