Make advent calendar bunting
If you want to learn how to make advent calendar bunting, check out this simple guide and get crafting!
Cheer up your home, community space, school or workplace with some festive advent calendar bunting. Each day is a little pocket that you can use to store chocolate, kind messages or other little gifts!
You will need
- Something to hang your bunting pieces from such as rope/bias binding/ribbon/string
- Fabric or felt – patterned or plain colours, enough for 24 double sided shapes (extra for numbers)
- Sharp scissors
- Something to stick or sew it all together e.g embroidery thread, fabric glue, cotton, wonder web
- Any embellishments such as beads or buttons
- Sewing machine (optional)
1) Cut out your templates
For ours, we used plywood but you could use a stiff card – cut up a cardboard box. There are all sorts of shapes you could create but remember you need to stitch or glue them together (so stars might be a bit more fiddly to make!).
Why not try:
- stockings
- trees
- candy canes
- gingerbread people
- baubles
- bells
2) Trace your shapes
Draw around your template onto the fabric or felt, then cut out your pieces. Remember to leave a little bit of extra space for stitching or glue.
At this point, cut out the numbers for your advent bunting too. If you’ve got patterned fabric for your shapes, it’s most effective to have your numbers in plain fabric (or vice versa!).
It’s usually worth producing a few extra, in case of any mishaps along the way!
3) Add any embellishments
Use glue or stitch on your advent numbers or any other decorations – that could be pompoms, little snowflakes and stars or something else.
4) Decide on how you’ll put it all together
Whether that’s fabric glue, machine stitching, blanket stitching by hand or wonder web, go for it!
If you’re machine stitching, turn your templates back-to-back and stitch. Take care not to stitch the top of your pocket, this is where your advent treat will pop in! Then, turn the pocket back the right way. If you’re doing it the non-machine way, stick all of your elements together however it works best.
5) Assemble your bunting
Hang your bunting pieces onto your string or tape using pegs, or creating little holes at the top of each piece. Then, pop in your little gifts and hang it up ready for advent to start!
Now you know how to make an advent calendar, all you need is to find somewhere to hang it and collect things to put in it. Happy making!
Thanks to Mandi and Katrina
Mandi and Katrina are part of a crafting group they created in Llanelli called ‘All about us’. They supplied the instructions and images for this fabulous festive bunting.
