A Festive Fourth

I've been seeing so many cute buntings out there and wanted to do one to add to our Fourth of July decorations. This is the one that finally inspired me to do it. I loved the raw edges of the fabric but knew I wanted to make a couple changes. I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like when it was done and just went for it. Here is a view of the entire mantel {still learning how to shoot without a flash so sorry for the blur}.

I just love how it turned out. Sometimes I tend to overdo it, so I resisted adding scrap ribbons in between the pennants and buttons to the bottoms of the pennants. Please don't laugh at the rest of the mantel "decorations" {if you can call them that}. If you've read this previous post, then you know I struggle with decorating in this house. Unfortunately I haven't done much with it since that post, but boy do I have ideas!

Here's a couple close ups so you can see some of the details.

I used a white bias tape to hold it all together. I LOVE ric-rac so I had to add some of that, too. I used a navy jumbo ric-rac under a red baby ric-rac and sewed it on with white thread.

I kept trying for good pics without using the flash but we don't get much light in this room so the pictures taken with the flash on seem to show the colors better.

Why does that color pop so much better with the flash? I need to devote more time to learning how to use my camera better. I used contrasting thread on each pennant and also switched up the stitches doing some zig-zag and some straight stitches.

What do you think? Do you like it? Or is it too busy? Like I said before, I had to restrain from adding more to it, but I really like it. So much that I'm considering leaving it up for the rest of the summer. All of our entertaining in the summer is done with my American themed Longaberger baskets and pottery so it all coordinates well. Makes me think I should have chosen that theme for decorating the porch, but more on that later.