Delighted Pennants Banner - Riley Blake

Recently, I became smitten with Halloween fabric for making banners with pennants. I figured I should try out different techniques and then use my favorite technique on the Halloween fabric. For testing, I found this very cheerful fabric from Riley Blake, called Delighted.

It comes in a panel. I bought a coordinating fabric for the backs, because I figured it would be a short banner if I backed one pennant with another, unless I bought more than one panel. Each panel looks like this, with enough room for 1/4 seam around all edges:

I couldn't decide whether to use batting or not, sew right sides together and then turn inside out or not, quilt the whole panel ahead of time, or not, serge the edges? So many options and I'm not big on style, so I needed serious help. I found this video online:

After watching this a few times, I felt  woefully inexperienced at this. I decorate like a couch-surfing bachelor (without the beer and porn). Amanda's pennants were so adorable, I decided to get some pompoms and buttons and crochet trim to match! I got a cavity in my sweet tooth, just ordering the adorable trims and embellishments!

I decided not to quilt all the layers together, hoping the buttons and trim would be enough.

I chose to sandwich fabric right sides together with 1 layer of Warm and Natural batting underneath. I sewed around all edges, leaving a small slit in the top of each banner, with the hopes that the hole closed would not be so noticeable at the top where connected to a hanging ribbon or twill tape.

Pretty soon, I was in a cheery mood just making them. The only curses came when edge-stitching the pompoms, which tended to get crushed no matter what foot I chose to use.

 

I made another set with pennants sandwiched wrong-sides together, with batting in between, and serged the edges with a wave stitch. Sadly, I didn't turn the corners very well, so they look skewed. When hung up, it looks like they're bent, blowing in the wind, but it's just bad serging on my part.

[i will post a picture here of this disaster some day]

Next time, I want to try applying the edging while I'm making the sandwich, instead of adding trims after I've turned them inside out. That may or may not be worse. Any ideas?