It’s football season and, around here, a few people cheer for O – H – I – O! I have been thinking about making a banner out of old T shirts for a while now. Having a few Ohio State shirts in my scrap pile, I decided to make an Ohio State banner.
I was inspired by my son’s cross-country meets. All the various schools set up tents for the athletes to gather. Most have tents in their school colors with the school name printed on them. Ours has neither. I offered to make a banner if we could gather old T shirts. We could even take T shirt scraps and paint letters on them. It would be a simple and inexpensive way to show school pride.
These banners would be wonderful to hang from a tailgate tent, or in the backyard for a party, or even as dorm room decor!
Supplies:
- T shirts
- Other fabrics, fabrics scraps
- Thick yarn, rope, ribbon, twill tape
- Scissors; pinking shears
I had some Ohio State fabric in my stash from other projects. I also thrifted a few T Shirts and the black, grey, and red plaid shirt. You can use anything!
Instructions
1. Create a Triangular Pennant Template: Use a piece of interfacing or scrap fabric to create a triangular template. Mine is 9″ wide at the top and 10″ down. You can use any size you prefer.
2. Cut Out Pennants. Trace your template onto fabric. If you are using a cotton fabric, use pinking shears to cut out.
3. Cut Out T Shirt Motifs. Cut the front away from the back if there is anything that you want to use on the back side. For shirts with motifs, determine what you want to include. For this T shirt, I decided to cut a rectangle and hang it sideways.
Use the rest of the T Shirt to create more triangular pieces.
Some motifs are large. You can use just parts of it, or the entire thing.
Here, I decided to only use the “O”.
I also used the sleeves to capture two colors.
The fabrics may curl a bit. If you prefer, you can interface the fabrics to minimize the curling. I didn’t interface mine.
4. Lay Out Fabrics
5. Stitch. I folded over the top edge of the pennant and used a wide, long zig zag stitch to sew the folded edge. I tried to stitch directly onto the yarn so the shirts wouldn’t slide. I spaced the pennants about 3″ apart. I just eye-balled it.
That’s it! Enjoy showing your team spirit and using up some of those spare shirts, too! Use whatever you have on hand. Next time, I want to try using Pom Pom Fringe. If I used this, I would simply stitch along the top strip with the fabric pennant underneath.
My banner is about 18 feet long.
