A Lantern Makeover

For some reason, since coming home from the States, I've had a burning desire to get our house in order. I have a few partially completed decorating projects around the place and spent the past week or so getting back into them.

The first was this lantern. You see them everywhere - plain white paper lanterns, this one cost me about 1.5€ at IKEA.

I had the idea that I should decorate it with some wee-little bunting. I had a very clear picture of the end product in my mind and started out full of exuberance one night.

I needed binding to attach my little flags to - so long 2 inch strips of fabric were ironed into binding. (For those quilt-impaired, this means iron the material in half long ways, open up and fold each edge into the centre and iron again, then fold the whole thing back in half on itself. Keeps all the messy cut edges folded inside.)

Then to make all those little flags. I layered 4 or 5 strips (1.5 in) on top of each other and see-sawed my little ruler along it to cut triangles. See my new little ruler? Cute huh?

This was a great stash-buster BTW.

Now, this was the first time I had used a little cutting ruler like this. It required a great deal of concentration because my natural inclination was to hold it along the upper most edge, which put my finger over the side. And we all know edge-hanging fingers and rotary cutters don't go so well together. So for those at home, DON'T do this:

Egads, woman! Pull back that finger!

Anyhoo, after cutting what seemed like a million little flags, I started to wonder why I'd thought up this hare-brained decorating scheme. But it was all worth it when cute little lines of bunting popped out the back of the sewing machine.

I gave it a quick iron and it came up beautifully.

Then came the best part. The hot glue gun. This was a recent purchase, not yet used. Where have you been all my life, little glue gun? This is the best invention ever! I know, I don't get out much.

After all that cutting, ironing and sewing, this was a breeze. I just glued the bunting down following the lantern's framework. All done.

Then I released my lantern into the wilderness. Here it is in it's new home:

IKEA also makes a turquoise-coloured hanging light fixture (you can just see the cord hanging from the roof) which matched perfectly.

Another project ticked off my list.