I would like to share with you a free pattern for my birthday bunting. We have a happy day coming up in our household. Every year I buy trashy plastic decorations and would like to stop! I have seen lots of news articles about the impact of plastic on the environment. This made me wonder whether I could make some bunting that we could re-use and this is the result. I am quite pleased with it 🙂
Firstly I made the basic flags. Working in double knitting weight yarn. I used yarn from my stash. If you are buying new, I do recommend the Special DK by Stylecraft. This yarn is great value and comes in a wide range of colours. I will leave a search link below. If you click on the link it will take you to the current offers Amazon have for this yarn. Please note any links in my posts may give me a small income at no additional cost to readers. You could make these even more sustainably by using recycled yarn. Yarn recycling is a fun hobby of mine and you can read about it, including methods and tips here.
Birthday bunting – free pattern starts here!
UK/(US) instructions – Basic flag pattern work as follows – using a 4mm hook and DK yarn
Chain 39 (note this is a chain of 37 with two for the turn)
Work one row in DC (US terms SC) starting with the third chain from the hook
Turn, chain two. Work one row in DC (US terms SC) starting in the top of the second DC on the row below.
Turn, chain three. Work one row in TR (US terms DC) starting in the top of the second DC on the row below.
Repeat – so that you are doing two rows of DC (US terms SC), followed by a row of TR (US terms DC). At the start of each row, reduce one stitch by missing the first stitch of the row and working into the second.
As you repeat this pattern you will find each time you work a row of TR (US terms SC) you will have 3 stitches fewer than you had on the last row of that type. Eventually you will get to a row of trebles where you only have 2 stitches to work and at that point you can finish off the work.
Making up the Bunting
To make the top of the bunting I started with a chain of six and formed a loop. I then worked 30 chain before working 37 DC (US terms SC) across the top of the first flag using DC (US terms SC). Put in 10 chain between each flag taking care not to allow the chain to twist. Carry on until you have included all the flags you need. At the end work 30 chain then six more chain. Slip stitch into the first of these last six to make a loop.
Finally, work 12 DC (US terms SC) into the loop formed by the six chain and then work DC (US terms SC) all along the bunting to the end where you need to work 12 DC (US terms SC) into the final loop and slip stitch to finish off.
If you wanted to make smaller bunting then simply start with a smaller number of stitches.
Decoration is optional depending on the occasion. As this is for a birthday I wanted to include the lettering. Initially I worked up the letters in free form crochet but I wasn’t very happy with the result so I used felt instead. This also made it a bit quicker to make. I edged the felt letters with blanket stitch in the same colour way as a contrast. Here is a close up of the ‘Happy’ 🙂
And on that note I will bring the post to a close – please let me know how you like the bunting. I will be putting it up on my Etsy page which you can see here. Happy crocheting!
April 2020 update – I am reusing this pattern to make rainbow bunting to show support for the medical profession and all carers as the world fights Covid-19. Pattern to follow.
Annie 🙂
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