A Banner Day

I took the time from David's Faire stocking this morning to sew up a banner for our Girl Scout International Day (a.k.a. Thinking Day) this weekend.  Our girls are putting it all on this year, from planning to clean-up, and as the hosts they are representing not a country but the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, or WAGGGS for short.  I was astonished to find that there is apparently no such thing as a WAGGGS banner for sale, not even for ready money, so homemade felt banner it is.  After ten years (ten years!) of summer day camp, I've had a bit of experience with glued-felt banners and, while they're great for a week, they can get a bit ratty-looking after a while, and you can't really store them easily as the glued areas are difficult to fold, and so I offered to sew it, so that the banner can be re-used year after year.

I got an outline image of the logo, and made a "poster" in Publisher, with "WAGGGS" underneath, and printed it out for the pattern, then the girls cut out all of the felt pieces and pinned them into place.  I used felt from a bolt for the blue background and the trefoil symbol, as I wanted them to be all one piece.  I sewed the inner trefoil pieces to the blue circle, then the large yellow outline to both the blue circle and the black banner, since it was so much easier to sew the fiddly pieces to a comparatively small piece than to the big banner.  It took most of the morning to sew, and that's without mistakes (!), but to be honest, this was much quicker than I expected it to be!

(The wobbly bits are the girls' pinning, and the ripples are mine.  I certainly have more respect now for people who can appliqué circles!  Even with felt, the pieces tended to wander under the presser foot.)

As for knitting, I'm afraid that I could have been a lot further along with this stocking if I hadn't been so charmed by that miniature Shirvan carpet!  Since David is away again to Shanghai in a few days, I turned the needlepoint face-down and resolved to knit like billy-o this past weekend -- as a result, I turned the heel yesterday afternoon, and am now about two inches into the foot gusset.  I decided on the so-called Barnim foot, as I like the pair I made for myself, and this type of stocking foot was known in Scandinavia in the early 1600s, so that if David wants a Faire persona, he can stick with the Swedish soldier.  I can get more knitting in while I wait for Julia at the orthodontist's this afternoon ...

Comments

[Dawn in NL]

I am impressed with your banner and the socks look cosy. Good luck with thecelebrations this weekend.
Dawn

[Toffeeapple]

It is such a long time since I last saw the Girl Guides badge, I was so proud of mine.

Those socks look very cosy.