Sunday 11 March 2018

Plastic free re-purposed bunting.

Every year my friends Katie and Ian and their band of "Fetchies" (followers of the running website Fetcheveryone.com) set up a cheerpoint, (Fetchpoint) at Mile 22 of the London Marathon.

Usually we inflate lots and lots of balloons in the Fetcheveryone colours of red and bright yellow and string them up in the trees lining the Highway so that "our" runners can see us easily. This year we have decided to try and make Fetchpoint plastic free and to that end I have been making brightly coloured bunting from discarded hi-viz vests.

Fetchpoint
Fetchpoint 2017 Photo Ian Williams Fetcheveryone.com

I was given a batch of vests with out of date branding to use. First I unpicked the binding around the edge and saved it for stringing the flags on later. Then I drew a template based on an isosceles triangle.

To make the template, measure out an isosceles triangle 10ins high by 8ins wide. cut down the centre to give you two right angled triangles. If you remember your school trigonometry- stick the two triangles back together along the hypotenuses (the long edges). This gives you half a flag. One of the edges will go on the fold of the fabric. To the other add a 1cm seam allowance (yes I know I'm mixing my imperial and metric.

I cut along the shoulder seams of my hi-viz vest and ironed it out flat. Now came the fun part of folding and arranging to get as many flags from one vest as possible whist avoiding branding logos. I managed 5 or 6 per vest depending on the vest size and position of the logos.

Next fold your piece right sides together and sew the seam, tidy the ends and press.

Trim the seam allowance at the point and turn your flag right side out. I use a chopstick to make sure the point is sharp.


Press flat with the seam down the middle of the back of the flag.

There we have it. A lovely pile of bunting flags ready to cheer those runners over The Wall and no nasty single use balloon waste.