Eclectic Red Barn: Vintage Doilies Make JOY Banner

We all know that Christmas is a joyous time. The music, shopping, baking, decorating and wrapping presents. Not to mention parties and quests. I love this time of year. However, a slight twist was added. Instead of having Christmas here in Davie, we decided to have it at our home north of Orlando. No problem, until my daughter who is flying in from California said, "are you decorating the house"? Yikes! Both houses?

Usually, we just put up outside lights. Now I have to do the inside. I went through some of my decorations to see what I could use up there, since I had already decorated the house here, not much. I decided to make as many decorations as I could. I did not want to buy enough stuff for two homes.

So this JOY banner was my first creation.

I started with some red burlap. I cut it 10 inches wide by 24 inches long. You can vary yours to meet your needs.

I found these vintage doilies. They were thick and had a pattern on one side. If I turned them over, they would work.

I only had two of these so I found another one that would work.

I cut out the letters in felt and then using thread, stitched them to the plain side of the doilies.

Eclectic Red Barn: Attaching letters to Vintage doilies

I didn't want to glue them since I didn't want to damage the doilies. The letters can be removed.

Once all the letters were stitched on, I stitched the doilies to the burlap.

To hang the banner, I found a dowel that I used on another project and cut it to size. I used ribbon to hang it. To keep the banner from sliding off the dowel, I glued two vintage buttons on the ends.

Eclectic Red Barn: Vintage buttons hold banner on

The banner gave this area a great punch of Christmas spirit.

It was an easy project to do and since I had all of the supplies, it was cheap!!!

I used burlap and doilies, but you could use other fabrics or paper doilies with construction paper for letters. You could even chain the doilies together instead of adding them to a banner. This might be a great project to do with the kids.

Off to make more decorations!