Color Guard Flag Construction Tutorial
Posted in Color Guard on Jan 29th, 2009
colorguardcentral.com
When constructing your flag, a good place to start is to transfer your design onto a posterboard. Before you do this, make sure that you know the final desired dimensions of your flag. Most posterboard is 36 inches by 28 inches. If your flag is larger than this, you might have to cutout and tape together a few pieces of posterboard to get the desired size of your flag. Use a large ruler, or yardstick to measure the posterboard and create the cutting lines.
In the image below, we had to cut out about 4 pieces of posterboard to get a 3 foot by 4 foot flag. The pieces were taped together using masking tape.
After you have a properly sized piece of posterboard, you next have to transfer your design onto the posterboard. To do this, it is best to use pencil for the initial drafting lines. Then, once you have the design looking the way you want, use a Sharpie marker to trace over the pencil.
In the image below, we’ve finalized our design on the posterboard. We also labeled the colors that correspond to each piece.
Now, it’s time to cut out the pieces you’ve just drawn. I’ve found that scissors work best, but an Exacto knife will work also. Before or after you’ve cut out the pieces, you should assign each piece a number. This is to ensure that you don’t get confused when you start cutting out the fabric because a lot of the pieces could look very similar.
The images below show the pieces after being cut out, and then being numbered.
The next step is to use the posterboard pieces to cut the flag pieces out of fabric. I’ve found the best way to cut poly china silk is to use a solding iron, or wood burner. Exacto Knives work ok, but they create snagging in the fabric, and it take a little longer.
When using the soldering iron to cut out the fabric, you need to make sure that you have a good base, so you won’t burn any tables. Plywood, or particle board are good bases …we use drywall because it’s smooth and doesn’t burn easily.
The image below shows us cutting out a piece of fabric using a soldering iron. (It’s a good idea to lay your pieces out before your cut them to insure you don’t waste fabric.)
This image shows the two tools we recommend for cutting fabric, the soldering iron and Exacto Knife.
Once all the pieces are cut out for a certain number, it is important to label the piece by pinning a piece of paper or post-it with the corresponding piece number. This prevents you from mixing up the fabric pieces. This also helps the sewer put the pieces together without getting confused.
Below shows an example of the pieces being labeled with numbers.
Once all of the pieces from your posterboard pattern have been cut out and labeled, use gallon sized freezer bags to put sewing kits together. Put one of each number in the bag and include a printout of the pattern and instructions on how to sew the flag together. (It may be a good idea to use the paint image that you use when designing your flag, just add numbers.)
Below you can see the fabric pieces in the bags, and then the finished sewing kit with the instructions included.
Now, after you’ve finished all your sewing kits, it’s time to sew them together.
