DIY Felt Birthday Banner Tutorial: An Easy Handsewn Project

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Celebrate birthdays with a DIY Felt Birthday Banner on a wall or mantle. Sew one yourself by hand using this tutorial, incl. a free downloadable pattern.

Kick off your birthday celebration with a DIY Felt Birthday Banner you can hang on a wall or mantle. You can easily make one for your family using this step-by-step tutorial.

With bright, colorful felt and embroidery floss, this project is easy to sew by hand at night while you’re watching TV. You could also use a sewing machine if want it done even faster. The banner’s interchangeable letters allow you to customize it for each person in your family so they feel extra special when you hang it annually on their big day.

A DIY Felt Birthday Banner that reads Happy Birthday Thomas.

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Felt Birthday Banner – Easy Birthday Decor

Last winter I had the honor of sharing this DIY Felt Birthday Banner tutorial as a guest post on Tatertots and Jello, a fabulous blog where Jennifer Hadfield, a mother of 4, shares creative tutorials and inspiration every day. Today, I’d like to share the idea with you, our Kenarry readers!

I thoroughly enjoy celebrating birthdays at our house. I decorate our sons’ bedroom doors. I serve them their favorite dinner on a bright red plate that says “You Are Special Today”. I bake and decorate cakes with whatever characters or animals they’re into at the time. I also hang a banner from our mantle that declares for all to see that it’s their birthday.

At first, I had a paper banner that I used for birthdays. But after years of use, it was ripped, wrinkled and ready to be retired. I needed a new banner and wanted to make something that was reusable and could be customized with the birthday person’s name. That’s when I came up with this easy DIY Felt Birthday Banner.

At the time, I didn’t have a sewing machine, so I made the DIY Felt Birthday Banner by hand while I was watching TV at night after the kids were in bed. I chose bright primary colors for our banner, but the DIY Felt Birthday Banner could be made in any color scheme you want. For each letter, I layered a background piece of felt, a white piece of felt and a felt letter. I then attached ribbon loops to hang the letter and finally adorned the letters with assorted buttons.

How to Make a DIY Felt Birthday Banner

What you need:

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

Instructions:

Just follow these easy instructions to make your own felt birthday banner.

Step 1: Plan your DIY Felt Birthday Banner

Determine how many letters you need to create and personalize your banner. You may be able to reuse letters from one person’s name to form another’s name.

For example, if your first son’s name is Thomas and your second son’s name is Samuel, you can re-use the A, M and S from Thomas’ name when you hang the banner for Sam’s birthday. Also, if you’re a parent, remember to make M-O-M and D-A-D letters for your birthdays too.

Step 2: Print and Cut Your Pattern For the DIY Felt Birthday Banner

Download the free pattern for the DIY Felt Birthday Banner (3 MB, PDF). The pattern includes:

  • The large rectangle for the colored felt
  • The smaller rectangle for the white felt
  • Two guides to measure the ribbons you’ll use to hang the letters
  • The letters for Happy Birthday and the full alphabet (Tahoma size 450 pixel font).

Printer Settings For the Banner

In order to maintain the correct size, make sure your printer’s page scaling is set to none or off when you print.

For reference, the large rectangle should be 7″ high by 5.5″ wide when printed. Once you’ve printed your pattern, cut it along the straight edges. You’re now ready to move to the next step.

Step 3: Cut the Felt and Ribbons

DIY Birthday Banner Tutorial - Kenarry.com


As shown in the photos above:

1. Pin your large rectangle pattern to your colored felt and cut around it. Repeat this several times until you have all the rectangles you need for your banner.

2. Next pin your smaller rectangular pattern to your white felt and cut around it. Again repeat this until you have all the white rectangles you need for your banner.

3. Attach your letter patterns to colored felt. As you do so, if you’re using assorted colors, keep in mind which letters will be next to each other in your banner. For example, you wouldn’t want both your B in BIRTHDAY and I in BIRTHDAY to be red.

4. Last, cut the 1/2 inch wide ribbon into strips using the pattern provided. You need two pieces of ribbon for each letter.

Step 4: Organize and Prepare Your DIY Felt Birthday Banner

As with any sewing project, the majority of the work is in the cutting, preparing and planning. Next, pin the felt letters to the white rectangles using straight pins as shown in the photo below.

Now determine which colored background will go with each letter. It may be helpful to lay all the colored rectangles on a large table. Put the white rectangles with each letter on top of the colored rectangles in the order they would appear in the banner. You can then rearrange the background colors until you are satisfied with the order of the colors.

(TIP: Use a single straight pin to keep all the parts for each letter together until you’re ready to sew it.)

Last, determine which colored embroidery floss you will use with each letter. I chose to use embroidery floss that matched the background color.

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

Step 5: Sew the Letter to the White Rectangle

Now comes the easy part – sewing by hand! I chose to use three threads of embroidery floss from each skein. I wanted it thick enough for the stitches to stand out. Stitch along the edge of the letter as evenly as you can. Don’t worry if it’s not perfectly straight as the letters are meant to look handcrafted and slightly whimsical.

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

By sewing the letter on the white rectangle first, you’ll be able to hide the back side of your stitches when you sew the white rectangle on the colored rectangle in the next step.

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

Step 6: Sew the White Rectangle on the Colored Rectangle

Center the white rectangle horizontally and vertically on the colored rectangle and pin it to hold it in place. You’ll start by stitching along the top of the rectangle.

Fold your 1/2 inch wide ribbon in half and hide one end of the ribbon between the white rectangle and the colored rectangle. Tuck the other end of the ribbon around to the backside and hold it in place by hand.

As you stitch across the top, sew both of the ribbon loops into place. Continue stitching all the way around the edge of the white rectangle.

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

When you’re finished attaching the white rectangle and 1/2 inch wide ribbon loops, the backside of your letter will look like the photo below:

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

Step 7: Attach the Buttons

Use the embroidery thread to attach a button at the base of each ribbon loop as shown in the photo below. Ta da! One of your letters is now complete!

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

Step 8: Create the Remaining Letters in Your DIY Felt Birthday Banner

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

Repeat Steps 5-7 to sew each letter until all the letters in your banner are finished.

Step 9: Hang the DIY Felt Birthday Banner

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

DIY Banner Ideas

Once you’ve completed all the letters for your DIY felt birthday banner, it’s ready to hang when the occasion arises.

I hang ours from our mantle, but you could also hang it from a banister, nails or hooks in a wall or any other creative place you choose.

I use three long dowels or stakes to hang the letters of our birthday banner. I also use 1 inch wide ribbons to hang the dowels from one another to form the banner.

For mine, I cut 1-inch wide yellow ribbon into five strips that are 11″ long. I folded over the top and bottom of the ribbon by an inch on each end and sewed it to form a loop. The finished ribbons are 9″ long. I slide the dowels through the loops on either side of the ribbon to hang the next line of the banner, as you can see in this photo:

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

Step 10: Safely Store the DIY Felt Banner for Another Birthday

When the birthday celebration is over, I carefully remove each letter from the dowels and store it in a plastic container until the next birthday.

DIY Felt Birthday Banner - Kenarry.com

What are your favorite ways to celebrate birthdays in your family? Please comment below and share. We’re always looking for new ideas!

Not enough time to sew a banner? Download this free printable birthday banner instead!

If you love this idea, please share it with your friends or pin it for later:

DIY Felt Birthday Banner: An Easy Handsewn Project - Tutorial includes a free downloadable pattern. - Kenarry.com

You also find these other Birthday Ideas on Ideas for the Home by Kenarry®:

Muppet Birthday Cake: Star-Studded Showstopping Stage

Muppet Birthday Cake: A Star-Studded Showstopping Stage, great for a Muppets Most Wanted birthday or a child who loves Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie Bear and all the other Muppet friends. - Kenarry.com

Zebra Birthday: Four Ideas to Celebrate

zebra birthday

Zebra Birthday Cake: Product Review for Duff Goldman Mix

zebra birthday cake

Love the ideas you see here on Ideas for the Home by Kenarry®? Subscribe today to get our weekly Ideas in Your Inbox newsletter plus other exclusive gifts and offers — all for FREE!

Originally published September 2014. Updated with more ideas September 2018.

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10 Comments

  1. This is ADORABLE, Carrie!! What a lovely keepsake for your family, too. I am pinning this to my sewing board. Love it!

  2. Oh Carrie, I LOVE this! It is so cute, and I love how you can make it to be used for all members of the family. You did such a great job, and the tutorial is perfectly detailed. I bet your boys LOVE having this up on their special day. 🙂

  3. SO cute!! I love the way it all connects and comes apart for storage! You are featured this weekend at the Create Link Inspire features over at Nap-Time Creations- Emily

    1. Emily, thank you so much for including our DIY Felt Birthday Banner in your round-up of free sewing tutorials. We hope your readers love it as much as we do.

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