Hanging out the bunting

It all started like this:

A little bit of crafty fun to decorate the church hall where we held Birdie's 3rd birthday party.  A big pile of felt, a pair of pinking shears, a little embroidery floss and some ribbon.  It took an evening and I had three lovely long strings of pretty bunting.  The perfect quick project.

Then I added a big pile of sticky felt flowers and some glue and sequins...


and a small and very enthusiastic little girl, keen to decorate her bunting.

The party was a big hit and the bunting looked great.

I packed it away for next year.


Then we had Christmas bunting, with the enthusiastic little girl and her best friend going nuts with the glitter glue and pom-poms to make some beautiful little Christmas trees, just perfect for stringing along a crochet chain.  We were on a roll.  The requests to "decorate more bunting" were daily.  The pile of felt, which Hubby had insisted was far too large when it first arrived, and the supplies of glitter glue and sequins diminished.

Then we hit upon the idea of using the bunting to decorate Birdie's bedroom

and suddenly there were requests for more bunting, in ever more intricate shapes.

Then it occurred to me that Mr Man needed some birthday bunting for his party, since the original birthday bunting was a little girlie and had been co-opted as bedroom bunting.  So out came the felt and the floss to make some rainbow bunting.

I realised at this point that I'd actually used up all the rolls of ribbon that Hubby had declared would be a lifetime's supply and needed to buy more!  I wondered if this was a warning that enough bunting had been made, but dismissed this in favour of the much more likely answer that not enough ribbon had, in fact, been purchased after all.

Before I knew where I was, I was buying fat quarters to make dinosaur bunting, on the grounds that it would be perfect for a boy's party and, well, it could always be used to decorate his bedroom after the party (if you ignore the lack of dinosaurs in the African savannah that is the safari-themed nursery)... As I sit at my sewing machine, I feel we have come a very long way from some pinking shears and spot of very easy hand-sewing. I suspect this way madness lies.  A small voice in the back of my head, that I ought to know better than to listen to, whispers "or business opportunity".

Yes, definitely this way madness lies.