Back with a banging backdrop!

Hey everyone!  The wedding of 2013 (my sister’s!) was last Saturday and I’M BACK!!!!!

So, I teased you guys a little while ago that I was trying to make this:

And . . . I did!  But in purple and green (of course):

Yep, the only picture I could find (thanks to my cousin’s husband via Facebook.)  Since there were two photographers following our every move, I didn’t break out a camera once.  Hopefully I will have some better pictures I can share with the interwebs once my sister gets back from her honeymoon (Cozumel!) and meets with the photog. (Also, the backdrop was pretty tall but that’s my youngest cousin back there who is also the tallest person I know.  So I think it looks a little smaller in the pictures than it really is.  And those are a bunch (not all!) of my cousins and of course my sister in the other purple dress.  Aren’t we a handsome bunch!)

So here’s how it went down, with bad iPhone pictures for illustration.

1.  We picked out five different fabrics – one dark green, one light green, one dark purple, another light purple and a final one in solid purple.  I cut them down to various widths ranging from 30″ wide down to 12″.

2. Spray with fabric stiffener (I used 3 bottles total of Alene’s Stiffen Quick to make all these).  Spray again and again.  Then iron into zig zags and glue closed after throwing a few stitches in the very middle to hold it all together.  (I went back to Alene and used her fabric glue pen – super fast and quick).

3. Repeat over and over. I think I ended up with ten fabric fans and one didn’t make it onto the final product (good to have some back-up, just-in-case stuff).

4. Sweet talk husband into making you the world’s largest easel.  Paint the easel white.  Staple gun fabric to it.  Staple gun pieces of metal hanger to it and sew your fabric fan to it so it will stand up straight.  Spray everything down with the rest of your fabric stiffener and pray for a miracle.

4. Make easel legs easily dissassemble-able (we used threaded screws and nuts) for transport.  Rip the rest of the fabric into long ribbon strips.  Bring extra everything – thread, glue, stiffen spray, double stick tape, staple gun and cross all your fingers that the dang thing will stay together at least as long as the ceremony.

5. Sister gets married.  Backdrop stays together.  Everyone is happy!

(This picture is from before the ceremony at a little park nearby.)

So that’s what I got.  Everything went off without a hitch – except for the intended one! (thanks Jess for the joke)  I’m so happy for my sister and also so jealous she is on vacation right now!  What’s been going on with you guys?  I feel like I was gone forever!!!  I have some more wedding fun stuff to share and then it’s off to the races with some house projects.  Cheers – CT