Prayer Flags

Lenna Andrews has arranged an exciting new swap on her Creative Swaps site and it's for prayer flags. I have lots of Tibetan ones hanging in the garden so was immediately enthusiastic about this idea and then discovered that there was also a free class about them on the Creative Workshops site, another example of great synchronicity. Lenna too provides an extensive PDF with imfo about them when you sign up.

So after absorbing all that I set to work. First of all I painted some white cotton in my painting shed (actually half of it belongs to John and is dedicated to all things tool related and some of them get painted too in the process!) and layered that up with hand-dyed fabrics to form a 5 x 11" piece of which I folded over the top edge  to finish up with 5 x 8" flags.

I then rummaged around in my box of imagery printed onto fabric sheets. When I do this printing, I always make sure that the sheets are completely full of pictures as the fabric sheets are quite expensive so you might as well make the most of them and this is how I use up the images I didn't need at the time. I layered these with lace, ribbons etc. and made arrangements I was happy with. You have to remember that the top will be folded over so keep that in mind when arranging your lay-out.

I mostly sewed everything down, including some transparencies I also came across as that to me as a quilter is the most secure way of attaching things together. And these flags are supposed to be hung outside so it's important it's firmly secured.

When that was done I added buttons as and where shown by hand..

For Lenna's swap you only need to make 3 (and get 3 back) but I knew I wanted to keep two myself so that I will eventually end up with 5 to hang up once my returns arrive and I also wanted to make an extra one as a hostess gift for Lenna, so in total I produced 6 flags. I chose the one below and John the one at the very top to keep. I'm leaving Lenna's choice to her out of the remaining 4.