Paper Chevron Garland

My son’s very first birthday is coming up and because we are THOSE people, we will be doing a smash cake photo shoot. I’ve been mulling over what props to use, what backdrop, what cake, cake colours…I’ve been mulling a lot. I’ve gathered some ideas that included garlands. Garlands are great for a little more personality and colour. They’re cheap to make and just elevate any simple backdrop. I wanted to veer a bit from the standard triangle garlands, however, so when I came across a single photo on Pinterest of a similar craft, it sparked an idea and I set to work on making my own!

Since this one birthday is going to cost me the moon, I decided to just print out my designs on paper and cut them out for free. My sheets are 11×17″ in size and each sheet makes a garland of roughly 60″ in length. I also varied the heights and lengths of the shapes to make them interesting but you can customise these any way you want! Down the road (since I love these) I may make a more durable/permanent version out of printed fabrics but these will do for the time being. I may transplant these to his high chair area for his party too. We’ll see.

This entire craft, and I made 2 garlands, took me about an hour with the most time being taken up by cutting out the shapes. Once the cutting was done and my scissor blisters dulled with a glass of wine, I began sewing them together.

This part was pretty fun. I used gold thread and matching bobbin to jazz it up a bit. I made 20 empty stitches to begin so I would have something to tape to the wall and then fed my first chevron into the machine. I sewed straight down the centre feeding chevrons as I went. I varied the spaces between shapes a bit and that’s it! I sewed one continuous line until all my shapes were sewn together, made 20 empty stitches at the other end and tied them off!

This was the quickest craft I ever made but so worth it. I’m just looking for reasons to make more now! I’ll post more pictures of them in use once we do the photo shoot. I hope you enjoy!