More advice from a sewer: to reduce the bulk two methods come to mind, most people are recommending cutting out only what's visible of each colour and sewing those pieces together, so that you're only ever a couple layers of fabric thick, but it is quite tricky. Your fabric could easily stretch as you sew it, resulting in a bulging final appearance, especially around some of the curves and corners. I've done it with patchwork shirts, and it was surprisingly hard. Your method is much easier to get a flat end product, but to reduce bulk while sewing, don't start with the background, do it in pieces so that you're only sewing through a couple layers at a time. For your banner, I could have started with the white circle on the dark blue center thing, then the sun (3 layers total), then put your dark blue line on the light blue, then on the yellow, then sew those two entire seperate pieces together, then the white. (I might have messed up the order cause I'm just looking at the thumbnail instead of rewatching the whole video, but you get the idea). The other thing is ask store employees if you can find one! XD They know a lot and if you're stuck trying to find a thing for a specific effect, like the piping, they can often point you in the right direction. Also the back of wrapping paper works great for patterns too, if you run out of newprint It looks awesome and you did a great job!
Advice from a sewer: While I have not made a banner before, there is something you could do to cut down on bulk. This may seem obvious, but sometimes we miss obvious things. That would be to cut out the center of each piece of your pattern. What that would mean is, where the peaces lay on top of each other, you would cut out a shape for that corrisponding piece. This may seem like a lot of work, but it would save on bulk. You could leave room for edging you used, so it lays flat as well. For the sun that gave you trouble, fray check is a great tool to use. However, I don't see anything wrong with using the double sided adhesive either. As for the biased tape, they actually have a tool to help make it and it's pretty common to see in most fabric stores. They typically come in sets of different sizes, so you can make it ths size you need. This would also give you more customizable color options than the range of ready made tape gives you.
Another use of making a flag like this is that it shows on both sides. That’s part of why it’s important in flag design not to use words, lest your design not work when mirrored.
As for maling biais tape, I (storting hobby sewster) have these tools. Unless I need a very specific pattern or color I don't. Use them. You need to cut the fabric diagonally (takes a lot of fabric) and you have so many nice colors at the fabric store. Maybe I'm not as experienced (I learn step by step, pattern by pattern)
The ruler mention hits me funny because I actually use machinist rulers now, which have an exact 0 and squared edge due to the precision required in that profession. Really changes your life.
I have been the same ever since I took a blueprint drafting class in school. It's a constant fight in my brain between those rulers and my sewing ones cause I have to remember which one I am using at what time or I end up with like 3-4 different measurements and a whole lot of confusion.
I'm a huge advocate for taking a step back from projects you aren't super jazzed about the progress of and coming back with fresher eyes! Sometimes, you reach a certain point in a project and you're just too tired, physically, mentally, or both, to think about it objectively anymore. You've been looking at it from all angles for hours on end and it just starts to look like failure. It's at that point that you start making drastic, sometimes questionable, choices in the hopes of "suddenly fixing it", when in actuality, the best thing to do at that point is to walk away. Go use the restroom, get a nice cool (or warm) drink, get some lunch, take a nap, whatever you need to do to take your mind off the project for a time. Regularly taking small breaks from a project can reduce project burnout as well as help prevent unnecessary/questionable design choices made in the heat of the moment. I'm glad you mentioned that at the end of the video! It's helpful for young or inexperienced artists/craftspeople to know that it's okay to not like the look of a project at first, that it happens to all of us at some point or another, and at a varying degree of frequency, too. Your videos have given me many cool and fun ideas for my own costume and decor needs, so thank you ❤
My mom is a quilter, not a pro by any means but she does have, like, 50 years of experience. I've learned practically everything that you've done in this video by osmosis over the years.
I’m really liking your Reckoning builds. One thing I would suggest for your kit (especially since your characters are textile workers) is a quilted gambeson. They seem like the type of armor that suits the Rivlans most, but they also look frickin’ cool. Anyway, I think this banner looked awesome and I’m glad you warmed up to it.
Tip for reducing the bulk is once a letter has been sewn it's essentially just a pocket underneath, turn it over and cut a lil hole in the backing layer and then use that to cut out the fabric in the back leaving a bit of seam allowance around your stitches Won't be the prettiest around the back but will help against breaking needles and you can always add a backing layer after the fact to clean it up ^^
This is cool. I've always wanted to go to the Ren faire with a banner and some friends dressed as knights. It would be badass to march in like a nobleman with guards, banners, and a minstrel
I interned at a furniture upholstery place in highschool and my boss would make bias piping out of the material her customers brought in. It was so fascinating to watch because she was so good at using every bit of material since a lot of times the fabrics were dead stock
Nice job!! Love the use of piping around the design, really makes it pop. My son always wants to watch your videos with me, and as soon as he hears the music he comes running. Now I have to help him make a banner.... 😆
This reminds me of the first time I used a smudging nub on a pencil drawing. It was one of my standard dragons, where I used to use simple hatching and crosshatching for shading. I was given the nub as a gift though, so I went ahead and used it. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew from the moment I used it that it was getting used in all of my future pieces. It was so simple to use and it made the shadows so perfectly smooth. I still use other methods of shading, but the nub is a really good tool to have in my kit.
Great project and great advice about not getting into your own head too much. As the crafter we see every detail of what we do. The public sees the end product. Love your work. You are an inspiration.
It's a good thing we're not neighbors because the local hardware store Jo-Ann fabrics would have a huge boom to their economic bottom line. Keep up the excellent work. Love how diverse you are
I think this came out beautifully. I'm glad that you took the risk on the airbrush step, as that really brings it to the finish line. It was a little too clean/plain before that step. An alternative would have been to do more stitch lines in those accent areas with other color gradients and just layer them like an embroidery project. Overall, I think your decisions were sound, and all the layers, while thick, will make the banner able to hang down in some good wind. It won't be flopping around in a light breeze, if this flies up, that's a strong wind.
ALL HAIL THE SOLAR EXCHANGE. And my wife works at Joann, one of my hobbies is wandering around in it aimlessly until inspiration strikes, and then taking advantage of her discount!
Sewing Advice: I have noticed you only fold your edges over once and stitch. This could run you into trouble in the future, if you ever need to wash it, the edges may still fray. You can use a product like Fray Check which is a glue to keep this from happening, or if you want a really clean edge, just fold your edges over twice, tucking those raw bits into it. I used to larp, and being able to toss everything in the wash once home, even banners, was invaluable. Maybe it was just me, but I always ended up in the dirt dead, or rolling around at some point. Another way to bind the edge of the banner would be to use double fold bias tape to sandwich the edges. This is also a good option if you forget your banners seam allowance to fold over, which I have done before. I prefer making my own, in cool patterned fabric. As for your center yellow design, you want to look up appliqué techniques. Your machine may have multiple stitches, and you want to look for a satin stitch. You can fake it with a wide tight zig zag. I found this tutorial that explains the process here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-scUGh6Gjlvw.html This will allow you to cut the design directly out without any extra allowance, and still bind those edges in. You might need to use some fabric stabilizer to make the fabric robust enough to take that much stitching, but you are using duck cloth, and that's pretty thick so might be okay. I think your banner turned out great!
The airbrushing was a little heavy, but if you throw it in the washing machine on hot some of that will come off. Then it's like weathering where you spray it on and "wipe it off" to leave the appropriate level of shmutz in the recessed areas.
Other folks have already mentioned how you could have saved bulk on the banner by using the "stained glass" technique with your colour panels, so I won't repeat that. Using paint to fill in the lines to make the shapes pop more was a cool idea. I personally would have stayed away from black, though--it makes things look muddy. I personally would have gone with more muted colours like medium blue on the white, dark blue on the light blue, & dark gold on the yellow, for example. You'd still get the shading, but without the dangers of the overly "dirty" look. It still came out looking great, though. Always start with the lightest colour/or amount of paint possible!
Another way that could be useful for black lines is satin stitching the edges. But it's also takes a lot of thread. And also for keeping things in place you can use that iron bond that you used in the sun for an applique technique. So I would do the same thing lol. Great flag btw
In the past when I have gone overboard on weathering with air brush weathering I have lightly hand washed it to remove some of the paint and soften it slightly
Gorgeous banner! If you're looking for more LARPs, Alliance LARP is having it's national event in Denver in October. Alliance Crossroads is doing a great job documenting all the different chapters around the states, a lot of them have really cool boss monsters!
Idea: Talion's sheath from Shadow of Mordor. I think it would be cool to make a sheath of the same style that can fit a LARP or normal sword in it. Particularly the large notch that allows him to holster his sword on his back with ease.
Spectacular! I'm with you on the airbrushing saga, at first glance it's a bit on the heavy side, but I think you're both figuratively and literally "too close" to it. From a distance, by sunlight or torchlight, without those deep lines I think you're absolutely right, it would have looked too flat and "clean". With a bit of use and exposure to the elements, I suspect that will all waether and blend marvellously.
Man that banner came out AWWWESOME. The airbrush looks a hair cartoony using black instead of a color for the shadows (like dark blue for white, orange for the yellow, etc.) However, that's personal preference. Still looks awesome. I recently made a WoW hoard banner that was... 24"x36"? I originally made it fairly crisp, made the emblem out of random leather scraps, and tried to make it fairly nice. However, next was the fun part. I went HAM on it making it look like it survived 10+ years of war. I went at it with a steel brush, a bbq lighter, and a xacto knife. That's when I found out you can cut leather then use a flame to spread the cut open, making it more pronounced. After that all was done, I went in with my airbrush (Thanks Nerdycrafter's box) with black to make it look like a ton of soot. Also "repaired" a few sections that would've prevented it from being held up easily.
Always love you guys's videos! The banner looks so awesome. Looking forward to making one of my own for my D&D group. Would love to see you guys make a nice wooden DM screen
I've done banners similar to this for scouting events. I used canvas and acrylic painted it all and then sealed it with a spray varnish. The paint seals the edges too so they don't fray.
That looks AWESOME! Well done! You can stop doubting yourself now. An idea for mounting the pennant...use some pvc lengths and joints, painted black or maybe brown like tree branches. They're light when broken down so you could put them in your pack. Otherwise, I know you'll come up with something creative!
A very awesome vid Cl3ver that is an awesome banner for you to use. I was thinking of making my own banner for my D&D character Kored Axehand and his group the dragons Bain
Hey Cl3ver! I noticed you drink a good amount of whiskey, and as a fellow whiskey guy I gotta ask. What is the preferred brand of brown liquor of such a legendary artificer as yourself?
The thing about starting at 1” on the ruler 📏 is real!! If I don’t start there my stuff isn’t perfect! So you’re not alone and it makes perfect sense! 😂❤😂
every sewist in the audiance making a face somewhere between cringe and how adorable at the 'I found this really cool stuff called bias tape, ever heard of it?' Should we tell him he can even make his own?
Whiskey with ice .... Dude you could so easily make Whiskey Rocks from soap stone and even work your branding into it.... And not water your beverage down
I'm not a banner maker, but I do sew and this is pretty much how I would do it. Just a couple of things I would change: 1) Try jigsaw-ing the pieces instead of placing them all on top of each other. It's more complicated, but keeps it from getting too thick for your machine (and no needles breaking!). 2) Go for a 1/2 inch seam allowance. On curved edges, it makes life a LOT easier. You can also notch the seam allowance so you don't have to fight the puckers so much! 3) In the future, try dry brushing the weathering and start WAY lighter than you want it to end up. It'll take longer, but you can better control the amount of paint/color on your finished piece. Great work!
I agree with all of this. You also can never underestimate the power of triangular cuts around a circular formation, keeping the folds smooth and avoiding too much overlap. Good callout.
Another Awesome video. For patterning, ikea sells a 2'x98' roll of "art" paper for like 5 bucks this way you never have to tape sheet together. My son used it to make a wooden claymore 😁
Hell yeah! I wanna run a shop at cons to sell my book and cloaks relating to the main factions in said book, having a banner for each of the factions would make perfect decoration!
I had two banners ages ago, one that was a replica of Zelda's dress the other had references to Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Cardcaptors. I might have to make me some new ones.
A quick tip for patterning: Y\If you don't have paper large enough, you can always use wrapping paper or packing paper. Some wrapping paper can be expensive, but you could always get a small cheap roll of birthday paper from the dollar store. (depending on the size of your project and how long you want the pattern to last)
I always buy an extra roll or two of wrapping paper when they go on clearance at work. And sometimes if you are lucky to be there, JoAnn's will do a Give Away day or two every so often after the holidays so you can even pick up a roll for free, at least at my store we always have a ton of left over paper that we always end up giving away and donating.
So since yalls LARP is coming up and last time Maddie didn’t have time to make her costume as fabulous as you did, I think she is due for some costume love. We should get videos of her updating her character. It’s only fair.
In the SCA, I have made large banners by making the base out of canvas, priming it with white house paint, and then painting a stenciled design with more paint, acrylic paint, and some sharpies to edit the finer lining details.
To cover my fully heavy armor I made giant ankle length tunic. The field is chevron throughout argent and azure. My sewing skills not being great I used white arcrilic paint on a blue tunic. For the seven spoke wheel (yes it's The Wheel of Time) I painted it using a stencil and paint marker.
So epic! I wanna make it, but I already have a backlog of unfinished projects I've started because of you though. I should probably finish at least one before I start another.
That turned out awesome. I think historically speaking, when they made the banners, they just used a single sheet of fabric and just painted on the standards. Mainly because fabric was so expensive to make in those days and paint can be made on site that it would be cheaper to just paint the standards on their banners. But in any case, your banner turned out awesome and I'm looking forward to the next video.
People ask about sewing machines close to the one you bought and I direct them all the time to your video and then they tell me that that is where they found it and started looking into it lol I'm a part of a bag making community and we're always looking for machines that can handle all of our layers lol
To be honest I was surprised that you didn’t just bust out some fabric paints in order to keep the bulk down. I love this design too. And in the future May I suggest fray checking your fabric. It helps with some finer pieces and certain fabrics. It looks amazing.
@@SkillTree There’s a product called fray check and what it does is essentially glue or seal the ends of the fabric to prevent fraying like what the sun did. I love using it in finer details and I always keep a bottle at my work station at all times. It’s clear so it doesn’t dye or stain the fabric and you can get a decent sized bottle on amazon for around 5 bucks. And depending on the size and type of the fabric piece you can sometimes skip seams. It works well on transparent fabrics
midnight rose is right with their advice here, i agree. and may i also suggest when using the air brush (i know, its scary and a Real learning curve) use darker shades of the colors you are going over, instead of black. ex, dark blue over the blue, a dark yellow over the yellow, etc. That may keep it a bit lighter in the 'oh no is it to dark?' scale, and you can always darken it more if it is too light. Over all I love how this banner turned out and im glad You and Maddie are too! Keep up the great work!
For making the template, if you've got a digital design, you can blow it up to the size you want it then open it in Adobe Acrobat, hit print and choose the Poster setting - it'll print out the design across multiple pieces of regular printer paper with guides on how to tape it together to get it to line up.
Love the banner, it looks SO cool! I can't give any advice on the sewing end of things, however, I do use an airbrush frequently. My chief suggestion would be to create a standoff stencil. Cut a slot in thick cardboard in the shape of the lines that you want to follow and hot glue some spacers onto the bottom of the stencil. This will hold the stencil off of the surface a bit, allowing the spray from the airbrush to feather out. The further back you are from the surface of the material that you want to paint the more feathered the line will be. Of course there is a measure of diminishing returns as you don't want to be too far or the airbrush paint/ink will dry before reaching the cloth. Hope that helps in the future. Keep up the great work!!!
This is great advice. We used flush/stand off stencils in college for painting patterns on set pieces. Often these were wallpaper or stone/brick wall patterns. They were amazing. Grab your ketchup and crunch away my friends.
if you're quilting for something heavy, the way you did it is fine. If you're trying for something flexible, better to keep your layers minimal -- i.e. cut out your base layer whole, then cut each next (color) layer so that overlying parts are hollow underneath (except for the white base).
To reduce the thickness of the layers you could try using duck cloth for only the field part. For the device try thinner fabrics, the sometimes sell $1 a yard.
Just a tip for not bulking up in the layers. Just cut out the piece of colored fabric that you see. Then you won't have so many layers on the top piece of the banner. With the use of the piping and the biastape you could have gotten the top back to perhaps one or two layers
For the loops on the top, you really should have gone with either two longer ones or 4 of that size and avoid the center of it, a banner pole tends to be centered with the vertical pole. I've made banners before, and tend to have a back and front rather than flag types. and kind of did things in layers where there was an overlap between them, but cutouts. where there's only a bit of an overlap under the pieces where it's stitched on, then the entire thing is almost quilted onto the front of the banner and a strip lines around the edges of the front and back that is also where the loops for the poles go. I was part of the group that got roped into doing them during high school and Jr high as they had a tradition that each year, each class designed a banner for the year that would be used in things and then kept up on the wall of the auditorium.
I remember trying to make a banner a few years ago to look like it was from a Monty Python/medieval era. At the time I thought it was okay looking, but seeing what you made makes me reconsider my own work... Not in a bad way, but in a 'I could do this better now' kindof way
Woah first time being this early :D love what you do here! Been binging your vids for a few days hopefully I’ll come back and make some stuff similar to you guys soon ^-^
Rather than cutting out such big blocks of fabric and layering them I would cut out each piece to the exact shape and fit them together like jigsaw pieces. (Except maybe for the sun and its white background since there are so many finicky little shapes there.) That way the whole thing would only have two or three layers of fabric instead of half-a-dozen. The bias tape worked well, but another option would be to sew the applique pieces with a satin stitch in dark thread. It makes very nice outines, and it is pretty easy to do with a little practice. A benefit is that you wouldn't need to fold the fabric since the raw edges would be covered by the stitching, which would also help cut down on the bulk.
Love your presentation and self-deprecation. I do very much appreciate your comments on taking some time away, and coming back and realizing that what you made (mistakes and all) is great, and not as bad as you thought originally. The small details I mess up on, at times, gets in my head - I appreciate you tackling that for us - and illustrating it wonderfully in this video. Love the final result. Also - although I like your choice of Bourbon's - you may want to break out and try some good (not too expensive) Scotch as well. For me, I don't like too much in the way of smokiness, so Balvenie is a great choice for me - and the Doublewood (14yr), or better yet, the Caribbean Cask (12yr) is a fantastic choice - both under $100 at your local Binny's.
Amazing! It's awesome. So, maybe if you do 4 loops at the top, the banner could either go on a horizontal pole or a cross (the thought being a crossbeam could be attached to an already existing tent pole)... Of course, you may need another sideways loop toward the bottom to keep it hugging the pole on those windy days. But it looks terrific just the way it is. But, honestly - it may not have enough pockets... you could easily add like 40 or 50 pockets to it... I mean, at LEAST 37...
If you need to knock out a set of banners in the future relatively cheaply and much more quickly, I'd recommend getting custom fabric printed and then sewing it into banners yourself. Spoonflower in the US and Contrado in the UK will do fabric that's about 3' by 4.5' for ~20 bucks, so depending on the size of your banners you can get quite a few and the designs can be very intricate.
great job on this, and I must say the design is amazing! I'm not looking for LARP but I am trying to design my own banner/tapestry/whatever for my altar space. You always seem to post just what I'm looking for, are you a mind reader? haha
As with the other sewists that responded, jigsaw all the pieces and avoid layering, but also, double sided fusible interfacing should also tame a goodly amount of fraying. You could also use felt, but you'd probably want to hit it with waterproofing because unless you are using natural fiber felt it would probably not wash well. Still, Huzzah! great idea!
