We know use the word bunting to describe a string of fabric or paper triangles strung along as decoration. Traditionally bunting has been used in the UK as decoration for festivities such as street parties to celebrate the end of World War II, the Queen’s jubilees, weddings and summer parties. It was all over the place during the Royal Wedding of William and Kate in 2011 and at the Diamond Jubilee a year later.
The origin of bunting
The earliest bunting was made in the early1600s and seems to have been related to the flags used on a ship. On a navy ship, the sailor whose job it is to raise the flags is still referred to as a bunt.
Bunting used to describe the material to make the flags – an individual triangular flag was called the tammy, a word derived from estamet, the French word meaning lightweight wool fabric.
Over the centuries it has been used as a celebratory decoration at weddings and public events.
Crochet bunting
Bunting knitted by readers of Woman’s Weekly for the 2011 Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace – Ally Pally – in London inspired Lucy of the blog Attic24 to encourage her readers to make crochet bunting for Yarndale in Skipton in September 2013. See the bottom of this post for the video of the Woman’s Weekly bunting challenge!
Lucy has an excellent tutorial for making granny bunting triangles and her recent article on the summer bunting she designed for Simply Crochet magazine.
This video is 20 minutes long but it shows in detail how to make a bunting garland using sweet little crochet hearts.
Once you have mastered the heart motif, these are quick and easy to do and are perfect for using up scraps of brightly coloured wool. The white background chain and surround really sets this off, but you could experiment with lots of different colour combinations.
From my own crochet bunting experiment, I am now pretty confident that bunting made of acrylic wool does pretty well outside in the garden in spring and summer. Its been out a month now, and still looking like it did when I’d just put it up. Makes the patio different. When I get time I’m going to do a string of hearts too with my Stylecraft SK special scraps. Perfect.
Making fabric bunting
This is a great video tutorial from Bride de Force to show how to make fabric bunting.
Breaking records with knitted bunting
This report details how Woman’s Weekly set about breaking the record for the longest knitted bunting. Ever.
Want to make a crochet mandala instead?
I have a new tutorial series on YouTube that takes you through each round of this 18-round mandala, step-by-step and stitch by stitch.
