Pinwheel party prep

My baby girl turns one on Sunday and I am twirling, whirling, wheeling.  One year? I can't believe it.
I decided on a pinwheel theme with pennant banners, AKA bunting decorations, too. Pinterest became my new best friend throughout that decision process and on into the specifics.

Examples of the invites minus the party specifics.

I made pinwheel invites/announcements that actually spin!  My favorite part.  We want Annika to be swirled in wishes and hopes and dreams and not necessarily mounds of gift. So we asked people to send or bring their wishes; we want to create a pennant banner decoration for her room and eventually turn it into a quilt.  How to make this happen is still plaguing me!

Emma's and Annika's shirts

I followed The Copycat Crafter to make a bday shirt for Annika.  Her instructions link to The Pinwheel Bib on another blog for the instructions on how to make a fabric pinwheel. BUt it also has another idea! A whole bib with a pinwheel. So great I had to do it- all. :)

Finished bib

So I decorated a onesie for Annika, a shirt for Emma (per her request), and made a birthday bib.  The bib has a purple PUL back fabric with a layer of thin cotton batting in the middle since the top fabric was so thin. I used a pattern that came with the PUL book but made it a bit smaller to fit the birthday girl.

A pennant banner name for the cake topper had to be done so I did it using scraps from the stained glass bunting made by following the artful parent site instructions.  Emma helped grate some crayons and made most of the sprinkled creations.  (I did the ironing  and sewing part.). Can't wait to see them in action!

I tried to tear off the wax paper rectangles into roughly the same size sheets. So after folding and ironing they were then about the same size. To make sure I ended up with similar sized triangles I marked one side of each completed sheet at 3 inches and 9 inches (the wax paper is 12 inches wide) along one edge.

Then along the opposite side I made a mark at 6 inches (the center).  With a pencil and a ruler (for a straight-edge) I connected the left corner to the 3 inch mark and from there to the center. Then from the center to the 9 inch mark and then up to the right corner. I cut on the lines and voila!  Due to some variation in the length of wax paper sheets torn off the roll, some triangles were a tad shorter or longer than the average. That just added interest!

SO now I had a huge stack of triangles to create the bunting plus some extra pieces. I sewed two chains of 12 each, one of 13 and one of 17 pennants.  I added the words "happy birthday!" to the 12 pennant chains, centering the letters as best I could. I used the leftover scraps to make a mini-pennant banner for the cake that had Annika spelled out.


I have cut out a lot of squares and made diagonal cuts in order to make pinwheels.  A lot.  We might play "find the matching pinwheels" game.  And color or draw a pinwheel contest.  Sidewalk chalk and triangle stencils are the preference if the weather is nice.  Pinwheel corn hole anyone?
At the last minute my hubby make a corn hole game with some extra plywood we had lying around. I bought some fabric to make bean bags and made some quick pinwheel bags. First I cut rectangles out of the pink and purple (4 each) accounting for a half inch seam on all sides (to end up with a finished square about 4x4 inches). Sorry, no details on measurements. Oops. Anyway, I folded the rectangles right sides together and stitched along two sides and part of the third, leaving an opening for filling the bag with small white beans.

Here you can kind of see the seams and open edge.

I weighed out 5 ounces of beans per bag using our kitchen scale.

Then I sewed the opening closed by top stitching. Since they are only for a game I didn't worry about making the seam pretty with hand stitching it closed to hide the stitches. This way was very fast!