Heraldic Bunting

The head of my SCA household had an idea recently - buy some pre-packaged canvas flags and decorate them with the heraldry of the household to create a decorative bunting. I thought it was a brilliant plan; quick, easy enough for all experience levels, cost effective, and visually impressive.

I had some cheap poster paints in my heraldic colours and just got some fixative to add to make the paint into fabric paint. The coverage was not great, and the result was pretty streaky. I put this down to the cheap acrylic poster paint, and next time I would invest a bit more on pigment-rich, higher quality paint.

The flags are canvas with holes punched into them. I decided to buttonhole edge mine because it can get quite windy here, and I would hate for them to fray and fall apart.

This is a great project for younger people to get involved in; I printed my device off from the Roll of Arms and put the print up against a window to use it as a "light box''. After that, it was just a matter of painting in the lines and putting down colour. I followed the directions on the fixative bottle; in this instance the flag had to dry for 24 hours before being ironed with an indirect heat to set.