Some Assembly Required

On By kittycalashIn making things
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Canton pieces laid out on a quilt on the living room floor. The house is too small for the entire flag!

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After I unpacked all of the pre- cut pieces of bunting, I separated the canton pieces and laid them out on the living floor. But perhaps an orientation is in order, though, to the pieces I’ll be assembling. Wikipedia provides a handy diagram, though of a far fancier flag.
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  • ​Canton: The upper hoist corner of a flag
  • Field:The background of a flag
  • Hoist: The edge of a flag nearest to the flagpole
In this case, the canton comprises the ca. 1707 Union Jack, that is, the Cross of St. Andrew and the Cross of St. George. The field will be red, as this is for a ship operating outside of British home waters. (See previous post for detail) 

The (thankfully) pre-cut pieces are all cut with a 1” seam allowance, larger than the ½” finished seams will be. This margin of error takes into account the bunting’s extreme willingness to unweave itself at every opportunity and the difficulty of cutting very large pieces of fabric. (I am really grateful I didn’t have to cut all of these — there are many flags being made– and can only imagine the hand cramps!) But to the business at hand: I had to guess a little bit, since there isn’t a construction manual. It looks a fright, I know: all those overlapping bits! The disorganization! If you like things just so, as I do, this project needs some corralling. 
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To get a better handle on a project too large for my table or floor, I made a list and measured each piece so that I could put them all into Illustrator and move them around more easily. I realize this is a luxury lots of people don’t have, but it’s really just a fancy, digital way of putting together what would be scaled-down pieces of paper in an earlier age.

It may not come as a surprise that in the process of doing the actual sewing, tweaks had to be made. What’s the rule?
​Check drawings against field conditions!