Sewing

Forget the scissors & craft knife! I have a sure-fire way to create the most amazing graphic-driven fabric banners for your kiddos room or next event. NO sewing skills required! How cool are those fabric banners that are made out of felt? You know where I’m going with this! Come learn how to make graphic banners with the fabric without mind-numbing hand-cutting. If you want to see which is best, the Cricut or the Silhouette then read about that comparison here.

+ This post brought to you by the lovely folks at Cricut +

Tools of the Trade

Having always been in LOVE with creating graphics, the idea of being able to design graphic driven projects out of fabric has always been a desire of mine. However, I don’t have the patience to sit with scissors or craft knifes to cut out my graphic elements. I was thrilled at the advent of the original Cricut back in the day. It revolutionized crafting, as we knew it, at the time. However, it just didn’t have the cutting chops for fabric. The new Cricut Maker is just as revolutionary as the first cartridge based Cricut in the Fabric world. It’s TOPS for sure!

Vintage Adventure Room

I’ve been working on a room makeover for my little guy, Gage. We created a vintage adventure room that covers everything land and sea. It’s all about adventure in this great big world of ours. I wanted to have some animals of the sea & land represented in the room. I used my Cricut Maker to make a vinyl stencil for this cute fox storage chest for his little gadgets and gizmos.

Next, I wanted to make some sea loving creatures for some fabric banners on his wall. We LOVE Narwhals and jellyfish at our house quite a bit so, I knew I had to create something with these two ocean gems. After a little design work, I came up with these cute designs. 

Supplies for Fabric Banners

The next trick, making these designs into fabric banners for Gage’s room. I rummaged through my fabric stash and found some colors that would go well with the room design.

Here’s the rest of the supplies you will need.

• fabric
• Heat n’ Bond
• Cricut Maker
• Cricut Rotary Cutter
• Cricut Bonded Fabric Blade
• Cricut Fabric Cutting Mat
• fabric glue
• wood dowel
• cotton rope
• sewing machine (optional)
• thread (optional)

Instructions

First, you need to create your design within Cricut Design Space. You can use either the large library of fonts that they have compiled at Cricut or, use your favorite fonts on your computer. You also have access to thousands of graphics that you can use to personalize your space or dress-up your party.

How to Prepare Graphic to Cut in Cricut Design Space

When you are working with multiply colors of fabric or paper, Cricut Design Space has some brilliant features that I really like. Instead of typing them all out I thought I would create a video for you watch that teaches you exactly how to prepare your designs to cut that really makes the cutting process so much easier. Click on the image below to watch the video.

Cutting Fabric

Now that your designs are ready to cut, it’s time to prepare your cutting mats. If you are cutting fabric, you need to make sure you are using the fabric cutting mat and the fabric rotary cutter. If you happen to have a rotary cutter that needs to be changed, here is a tutorial on how to do that. Cut your fabric to fit the cutting mat and place it on the mat.

PRO TIP • Don’t worry about cleaning the fabric cutting mat of all the fuzz & threads after you use it. It will work just fine with fuzz & threads. Attempting to clean the mat actually does more harm than good.

If you are planning on ironing your graphics onto the banners, you’ll want to iron-on the Heat n’Bond BEFORE you cut your fabric. (I use my Easy Press, which I LOVE!) In that case, you may want to use the Bonded Fabric Blade when cutting your fabric. I say that with a caveat, I found that the bonded felt that I used cut better with the rotary cutting blade.

Graphic Placement on Banners

Once you have all of your graphic element cut, you’re ready to place them on the banners. I like to layout my design onto the fabric banner first, to make sure I like the placement. That’s where the Cricut Weeding Tools come in real handy. I LOVE those tweezers!

Next, I use the Easy Press to warm the surface of the fabric banner and then lay down my graphics again quickly. Then, I cover them with the Iron-On Protective Sheet or a cotton dish towel if using a standard iron and press my graphics onto the banner according to the Heat n’ Bond directions.

3D Graphics on Banner

One really fun thing you can do when cutting graphics in this manner, you can add some little 3D elements to your design. I thought it would be fun to have my narwhal’s fin to pop out a bit to give him a little more character. When I was pressing the narwhal onto the banner, I placed the used backing of the Heat n’ Bond under the fin with the shiny side of the paper facing the fin. That would mean the it wouldn’t stick to the fabric or the paper.

Now, his cute little fin will pop right out!

Creating Banner Hanger

Now, to hand the cute banners that you just made. You need to either sew a pocket for the dowel or use fabric glue to create create the pocket. I prefer the sewing method however, if you don’t have a sewing machine, you don’t need to run out and purchase one just for this project.

You need to fold your fabric over to create a pocket large enough to feed your dowel through.

When you have the banner with the dowel ready to hang, attach the rope and hang on the wall!

Now, I know you are going to want to save this tutorial and share it with all of your friends (wink, wink!) Here is a handy graphic to Pin…

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This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

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