Wedding Prayer Flags

Whenever I saw pictures of Tibet or of the Tibetan community in exile in India, I was fascinated by the strings of prayer flags. From one small string flying outside a dwelling to thousands of strings flying from stupas or shrines.   Dan has brought me several sets from India over the years and I even made a set of art quilts that are prayer flags.  (See photo above. )  Dan has a little set that I made and I made a little set for Dan's friend Ravenna when we went to hear her sing at Duke.

Traditional prayer flags are printed with a mantra or prayer and Tibetan Buddhists believe that the flapping of the flags in the breeze carries these prayers away from the flag to spirits greater than their own.  The prayers written on Tibetan prayer flags always express positive intentions for happiness, enlightenment, and protection of all beings.  When we were thinking about decorations for Anna and Matt's wedding, it occured to me that I could make prayer flags in all different purple fabrics. To make them even more special to the occasion, I'm making family strings of flags with the names of the family members written on the flags.

These are all the flags cut from my purple fabric stash.

So that the flags won't bunch and fold up on each other when they are hanging, I decided to zigzag them to the crochet cord.

Here's a detail of that happening.

The first string is finished. It's for our family. Anna and Matt will have their own string of flags as their family begins.

Quick update:
Frieda Oxenham also has a post about prayer flags today!  Thanks for the heads-up, Frieda.

Making some personalized wedding decorations

Since these pennants are meant to be a surprise for Anna, I'm scheduling this post for the week of the wedding. I've been seeing pennants on so many of the blogs and I got to thinking that it would be a great way to decorate the screened porch along with the little Japanese lantern lights.

I drew an isoceles triangle as a pattern and started through my stash of purple fabrics. I decided to alternate light and dark for the pennants and the letters and the lining of the pennants.



I ironed Wonderunder© on the back of fabric scraps to cut out the letters.



I made a length of continuous bias tape from which to hang the pennants.
They say "Best wishes Anna & Matty!" A pennant with a heart separates the first two words and the ampersand separates their names.



Here are all the rest of the pennants cut out and waiting to be sewn together.



All finished! The top row shows the pennants from the back and the bottom row is the front sides.

Anna came up with a very clever design for the table tents.  She and Matty decided to name the tables rather than just put numbers on them.  They are named after places that are special to both of them.

This is one of the table tents all finished.

Anna punched all the holes in the programs and hammered the snaps, too.  I trimmed them all.

A stack of finished programs.