A Perfectionist's Guide to the DIY Soccer Banner

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Soccer Banner 2015

August 2015 came, and with it a new soccer season. My 6 year old son now is in U8. The team's coach called the initial team meeting at his home on August 11. We were excited to meet the new teammates and families, and see the team colors for the season. The boys (and I) were thrilled to see that the jerseys and socks were bright red. The team wouldn't decide on their team name until their first practice.

At the team meeting, the coach brought up the banner issue. I suggested buying a vinyl banner (following my own advice from last year). However, a couple of families adamantly did not want to pay the amount it would cost for their share for a vinyl banner. I agreed to lead the banner effort if other families understood that it would take time and effort in place of money to make it happen. Lots of nods and agreement.

I confess to trying to influence the team name/theme by making lots of suggestions to my son. Stuff like "Rush," "Flash," "Red," etc. Stuff that could be rendered easily or abstractly for making a banner. My efforts were completely in vain.

The first practice was two days later on August 13. The boys decided then on their team name - Pumas. I groaned. First, cheering for Pumas kind of sounds like cheering for excrement. More importantly for the task at hand, this was going to be a more involved banner to make. The good news was that the first game wasn't until September 12 and picture day September 13. We had a full month, compared with the ten days I had to get it all made last year.

With the experience of one banner, and extra time, this is what I churned out with the help of several team parents:

I'll run through the steps that I took, modifications I made from my approach from last year, and give the budget for this year's banner. When I have nothing new to add to details I wrote up last year, I will reference a specific date from last year's post (2014) if you are curious about the details or methods used.

Banner design

Image capture/brainstorm using Pinterest

I googled terms including "puma," "mountain lion," and "cougar" to search for images. When I saw the claws, it got me thinking that playing with claws actually tearing through the banner might be interesting.
Layout using MS Publisher

This was a very early version of the banner design, but quite close to what we actually made. I was able to copy my file from last year's banner, change the background color, change a few elements, but a lot of the work for figuring out MS Publisher and scaling the font sizes was already done last year. Bonus!
Choosing fonts that were available for free download from Dafont.com. Fonts used in this year's banner:

Johnny Torch Rotalic for "PUMAS"
Massacre for player names
Franchise for sponsor, coach names, "AYSO," and team number

Gathering materials

Felt, on sale for $2.99/yd, plus a 20% off coupon at Joann Fabrics. Colors used were red for banner background; black for text, name backgrounds, puma background, and patches on soccer ball; white for text, soccer ball, and puma teeth; yellow for puma claws; dark tan and light tan for puma. 8 yds of felt used.
Glue, two types used.

Repositionable Tacky Spray is used to adhere paper to felt for cutting out letters and patterns. You want to use something that will adhere enough for cutting out letters and patterns, but not so tightly that you can't pull the paper off when it's time to glue the pieces to the banner (I had this problem with more adherent glue last year.)

And Original Tacky Glue is used to adhere felt-to-felt. It took a little over 16 oz to do the entire banner for this year.
Beads, plastic bear claws (2.5") for creating the claw assemblies.

I talked to my sister after I ordered these but before they were delivered. I knew she had experience with this type of bead. She thought that their size might be small relative to the scale of the banner, and that I might need to do something to beef them up.
Hardware, replacement PVC el joints and linear couplings to replace broken ones from last year.

A change from last year: we purchased 3/4" steel stakes to use for holding up the PVC frame. A parent on our team last year brought these to use instead of the 3/8" rebar, and they worked much better. They are only a couple of dollars more, and well worth it (in my opinion.)

Enlisting help

Requires preparation

When the bear claw beads arrived, there was a bigger problem then looking anemic. They were very sharp! So sharp that I could imagine them snagging or cutting the banner when folded. More importantly, sharp enough to injure someone if they were walking by and didn't notice them protruding from the banner.

As a solution, I double-folded a length of yellow felt to cover the bead, so that there would be two layers of felt on each side face of the bead. This required anchoring each felt cover to the bead hole, then stitching along the perimeter of the claw.

I was going to be headed out of town for a week, and enlisted one of the families with 6 kids (!) to work on the stitching while I was gone. They did a great job and really know what teamwork is about! In order to pass this project off to them, I had to prepare the appropriately-sized felt lengths. Additionally, I wound bobbins so there would be plenty of thread for each set of hands working on claws.
All of the letters on the banner were cut by hand, not purchased. The letters were prepared by printing the words in their mirror image (in MS Publisher), adhering to felt using spray glue, and cutting out. Here is a working example of how I generated the words' mirror images. The words adhered to felt are in gray.

Once the letters/words were adhered to felt, I could pass those out to team families for cutting. I got this done before my trip, and got great participation from other families.
For this banner, I also used paper adhered to felt to cut the name and claw backgrounds. The sharp points work better with having a paper foundation; otherwise, polyester felt tends to shred if you pull or fuss too much at the sharp, pointed ends.

Sewing banner seams

I sewed the 8ft x 4ft banner identical to last year's, using a double seam and cutting 45 degree angles at the corners. It held up very well last year, so I saw no need to mess with a good thing. For details, see step 4 under August 29th for the 2014 banner.

Making graphics

Center puma and soccer ball

I approached generating the images and patterns the same way that I did last year. (See August 31st steps 2-5 for the 2014 banner for detailed description.)
First, I projected the puma image and soccer ball image onto poster-size paper at the sizes I wanted for the banner. I sketched along the lines, filling in the black background for the puma.
Then I made a pattern that could be transferred precisely and repeatedly by punching holes along the lines, and rubbing powder through the holes. For all of the non-white felt, I used a 1:1 mix of tapioca starch and baking soda. For the white felt, I mixed in cinnamon for contrast.
The puma was constructed of three layers: black, dark tan, and light tan. The soccer ball was constructed of a white layer with black patches. The relevant pieces were cut from each layer, and the powdered dots on the layers below showed where to place top layers.
The soccer ball lines were made by using a zig-zag stitch on the sewing machine along the powdered dotted line. The black patches were then placed on top and glued down.

Banner layout

The next step was to lay out the banner in preparation for gluing. It's good to make sure everything fits before committing!
In order to get a polished look, it's important that all of the edges get glued down. Doing this is no small task. To get to that point is an iterative task, requiring several days. You have to glue, glue, glue - then let it all dry and see what has stuck. Then glue again, sealing down around edges. Rinse and repeat. It really does look good if you stick with it, though.

Claw assembly

The claws were the trickiest, most time-consuming part of this banner. It's a cute detail, but not one that I'm sure really stands out from a distance. The boys really love it though, especially standing behind the banner and poking their fingers through the claw wind vents.
As a construction detail, the goal was to have claws all linked together, removable, and able to be added as last step after gluing.
The idea was to have something waterproof and lightweight to link the claws. My idea was to use a piece of hard lamination, with holes punched for stitching the bead on one side of the laminated card to a button on the other side of the laminated card.
I put some felt in between to pad the interface and allow a bit of cinching of the stitching. I cut the holes quite small for each claw, so I had to squeeze them through. Having small holes to squeeze through, plus having the claws anchored in the back with the laminated card, keeps them together and upright. It worked as intended and was an inexpensive solution.

Wind vents

Remember to cut wind vents! In this banner, the wind vents are cut above each claw so that it looks like the banner has been clawed through.

Additionally, there are wind vents cut around the puma, along its lower jaw, back leg, and under the curve of its tail.

Budget

Vendor	Item	Price	Discount	Price Pd	Tax	Shipping	Total

Home Depot	PVC coupling 4@0.22	$ 0.88		$ 0.88	$ 0.08		$ 0.96
	PVC el 2@0.41	$ 0.82		$ 0.82	$ 0.08		$ 0.90
	36" stakes, 2@4.85	$ 9.70		$ 9.70	$ 0.90		$ 10.60
	Painters tape	$ 1.98		$ 1.98	$ 0.18		$ 2.16

Joann	Buttons 7@1.00	$ 7.00	25%	$ 5.25	$ 0.49		$ 5.74
	Felt (6 5/8 yds)	$ 18.89	20%	$ 15.11	$ 1.40		$ 16.51
	Felt (1/4 yard)	$ 1.50	30%	$ 1.05	$ 0.10		$ 1.15
	Tacky glue 8oz	$ 4.49	30%	$ 3.14	$ 0.29		$ 3.43
	Thread	$ 4.18	30%	$ 2.93	$ 0.27		$ 3.20

Michaels	Tacky glue 16oz	$ 6.99	40%	$ 4.19	$ 0.39		$ 4.58
	Tacky glue (spray)	$ 9.99	40%	$ 5.99	$ 0.55		$ 6.55

FedEx/Kinkos	Copies	$ 7.28		$ 7.28	$ 0.67		$ 7.95
	Lamination	$ 2.49		$ 2.49	$ 0.23		$ 2.72

Online order	40 plastic claws	$ 12.40		$ 12.40		$ 8.00	$ 20.40

						TOTAL	$ 86.84

I was able to re-use the PVC frame from last year's banner, saving a few dollars. Bottom line, we made this banner for a total of $87. Lots of bang for the dollars spent.

Monday, September 8, 2014

My oldest son just started his first year of AYSO soccer. Before now, I have never attended a soccer game or seen these banners, so I went into this blind. My purpose in writing this is to document comprehensively how I went about making this banner so that others can go about the process more efficiently than I did, learning from what I did well or not-so-well. I will leave the comments section open so others can share their tips and suggestions for how to do things better or more efficiently. I am including my timeline and costs, and welcome feedback on those aspects as well.

So first, I’ll give some background on my situation. The local AYSO organization sent emails in July saying that my son had been assigned to a team that did not yet have a coach, and that if no one stepped up to be coach, his team would not be able to play. Now I know nothing about soccer or coaching. Furthermore, I have no athletic abilities. On top of it all, I have little patience for my own children and none for other people’s children. I have no business attempting to step up to coach a soccer team. After several of these emails alerting us to the no-coach situation and then several weeks of radio silence, I contacted the point person with our local organization to get an update. He let me know that someone in fact had stepped up to be the coach and would be getting in touch. I let the rep know that I was grateful because I was thoroughly unqualified to coach, and would be willing to help in any other way. He told me that there would be opportunities for parent involvement and to get involved that way.

Fast forward to August 27, our first team meeting and practice. The coach had the kids decide on the team name (Blue Sharks) and asked for volunteers for Team Parent. Another parent volunteered, but said that she didn’t have any creative skills and couldn’t do the banner. I told her that although I’m not a crafter, I do have some sewing and quilting background and could probably lead up the banner effort. The coach tore the Team Parent page out of his handbook, then tore the page in half to give me the portion relating to the banner. Thus began the process. Spoiler alert: See Sunday, August 31, item #1. This may save you many, many hours and headaches!

Wednesday, August 27

Found out the team color and name. In my case, the team was the Blue Sharks. The team’s jersey color was sky blue.
Got specs for banner including dimensions, letter height, content, etc.
In our region, for child safety and working to de-identify the kids from potential creepers, we were asked to include either the player name or player numbers but not both.
Googled “How to make soccer banner.” Maybe that’s how you landed on this page yourself. There are lots of helpful links, and I will include some of the ones that I found to be helpful here.
Checked out Pinterest pages and Google images for terms like “soccer banner” to get a general survey of soccer banners that caught my eye.

Thursday, August 28

No progress on banner.

Friday, August 29 (heading into Labor Day weekend)

Consulted with Julie, one of the owners of my local quilt shop who now has grown kids and is the quintessential “team mom.” I figured that if anyone knew about making team banners, she would. I was right. I learned several important tips from Julie, like the following:

Use a PVC frame.
Make the banner out of felt.
Use Aleene’s Original Tacky Glue or hot glue gun. If you use Tacky Glue, allow 24 hours to dry.
Get to Joann’s first before anything else, in case lots of other people in the area are doing the same thing at the same time – this could be a likely scenario.
A common motif is to have a central image, surrounded by smaller icons representing each player. Each icon can have the player’s name.
Sometimes teams cut out the part of the banner with each player’s name at the end of the season and give them to the players as a keepsake of the season.
Cut wind vents in the banner prior to the first game, or you may be sorry.

Having spoken with Julie, I felt a lot more confident. I stopped by home to grab my Joann’s mailer with coupons, then headed straight to Joann’s to get felt. Joann’s had a great selection of 72” wide felt on the bolt, and – BONUS – it was on sale for $2.99/yd, discounted from the regular price of $4.99/yd. Because of the width of the felt, I saw that we could easily get a single cut that could make the maximum size of banner according to our banner specs, 4’ x 8’. I chose a blue for the banner background that was similar to the team’s jersey color, and got 3.5 yards for the background. I didn’t have a specific design in mind, but figured it would involve sharks or shark fins, soccer balls, and text that would need to be seen. I also wanted to include some water-looking tones. I picked up some felt accent colors that I thought would “pop” against the blue, black, white, and gray, if any additional emphasis might be needed. I bought 2 yards of black, 1 yard of white, 1 yard of royal blue, 1 yard of gray, 1 yard of neon blue, and then ¼ yard each of accent colors.

I also bought a spool of thread matching the background for sewing the "pockets" for holding the PVC frame, and I saw a can of Aleene’s Tacky Fast Grab Spray that was on sale that I thought I might use (and did!)
Got PVC tubing at Home Depot. The banner specs required a PVC frame, and I had seen this video, which I found to be very helpful.

I got three 10-ft lengths of ¾” PVC40 pipe. I had two of them cut into 6-ft lengths for the vertical bars of the frame. I had the third cut into an 8-ft length for the top horizontal bar of the frame. I asked a Home Depot employee to do the cuts. It didn’t cost anything to have the cuts made other than a lot of waiting around. To connect the horizontal bar to the vertical bars, I got two ¾” 90-degree connectors.

The video recommended two 4-ft lengths of 3/8” rebar (painted red on the end), which were easy to find.

It was kind of rusty and greasy to carry around, though. I realized that I had two 4-ft lengths of PVC left over from the lengths from which the 6-ft bars were cut, and I could store the rebar in those. I went back to the PVC area, and found these caps to make nice little holders for the rebar stakes (and keep my hands grease- and rust-free!)
Got home and assembled the PVC frame, spread out the background flannel, figured out how wide I wanted the “pockets” for the PVC frame components to be. The guide here is close to what I did. I've included the key graphic from the linked website below.

I allowed 3.75” for the “pockets”, and did not cut the squares out of the corners prior to sewing. I sewed a seam at around 3.5” and second one alongside 1/8” away. My rationale for this was for both seams to share some of the pulling and tugging from the wind instead of relying on a single seam. Now seeing the banner in action, I don’t think I would trust a seam done with a glue gun, and certainly not one done with Tacky Glue. I did not cut the corners prior to sewing because I wanted the corner seams to overlap for strength, as you can see in the photo.

I sewed the top seam first, then pinned the banner sides around the PVC frame. I made sure the banner would stretch taut – but not too tightly – between the vertical poles when assembled in the frame. The last seam was the bottom seam, measured to be finished 4-ft from the top. It isn’t strictly necessary to do a bottom seam, but I thought it would look better and that the bottom seam would add some structural integrity against the wind. After all 4 sides were sewn, I cut a 45-degree triangle outside of the corner seam, the same size from all 4 corners. Great, so now I have a great-looking blank slate, but now what??
At this point, I ran through some options that I thought might work, including the following:

Shark in middle, each boy's name with its own soccer ball around
Ball splashing in wave, each boy's name with its own shark around
Shark in middle, each boy's name with its own shark fin around
Ball splashing in wave, each boy's name with its own shark fin around

I threw together a Pinterest page

with some sample banners to show to the other team parents, and then gave them the four options to vote on. Two people responded. One of them was my husband. Option 3 was the winner. And I learned that parent participation was not looking good for the Labor Day weekend. I didn’t have much of a choice because this banner needed to be completed by Saturday the following week, September 6.
Another website that I found to be interesting and useful was this one. She has great photos documenting the process. Most helpful for me was her recommendation to use Microsoft Publisher. I’m not a design or publishing person, and until now I had never used MS Publisher. In fact, I didn’t even know that I had it included as part of my Microsoft Office 2010 suite on my computer until I checked. I ended up using it A LOT in the design of my banner, including for layout, printing, tiling, and sharing PDFs and updates with others. I will include progress in the designs to show how helpful this tool was. If you have access to it, use it! I found it to be quite intuitive and felt comfortable using it within minutes. A nice feature included the ability to make a background of any size, including 4’ x 8’. If you create a text box, with text that is a size you think looks good, you can zoom in and see how tall it is according to side rulers. You can manipulate images and text with quite a bit of flexibility.
I googled images and clip art for sharks, shark fins, water splashing, soccer balls, etc. This was a kind of brainstorm of images. I did screenshots of the images that caught my eye using the Windows 7 “Snipping Tool”, and saved all of the screenshots to a screenshot folder. My only goal was to get ideas for a design.
One thing I really wanted to do with the banner was use eye-catching fonts, something beyond what you could buy off-the-shelf at an office supply store. I found some great fonts that were easy to install on my PC and were free. I tried to make sure that the fonts were sans serif fonts that weren't too fussy in order to minimize cutting grief.

Saturday, August 30

Came up with the first draft of banner.
Made sure that the kids’ names were 3” tall as in the banner specs. I turned each name into an image (jpeg or png) by taking a screenshot of their name in the font I wanted to use, zoomed in on the screen. One limitation of MS Publisher is that it won’t turn the text (as part of a text box) into the mirror image. I wanted to print the mirror image in order to stick the paper onto the back of the felt and cut out the letters.

When each name is an image, I import it into Publisher, superimpose it onto the forward-facing name, then scale it until it’s the correct size. With the name as an image, I could "flip" the image to get the mirror image. At that point I could move it to a blank 4’ x 8’ document for printing. Hint: I changed the color of the font to a light grayscale to save on inkjet printing. I used the Aleene’s Tacky Fast Grab Spray to adhere the paper to the felt. I cut out the letters using kitchen shears

and sharpening frequently.
Once I had the longest name, I drew a wave to be made out of white that would be large enough to accommodate the entire name. I made a pattern out of that wave, then made a pattern for a background wave and a shark fin.

I traced around these with a Sharpie pen onto the appropriate colors of felt. These were something I could pass on to other people to cut out.

Sunday, August 31

We went to church in the morning, and I told one of my mom friends that I was up to my eyeballs in soccer banner making. She looked straight at me and laughed. Then she asked whether I knew that people don’t really make their banners, they pay to have vinyl banners printed up. I groaned. Yes, I had seen all of these vinyl banners online as I was looking up banner ideas and instructions, but the banner specs didn’t say *anything* about those as usable options. Ugh. Well, I was already committed at this point, having spent a lot of time and more than $40 at Joann’s. I felt very, very silly, to say the least. Check out something like this for great prices.
So the next big job was going to be making the shark. I figured that I could print the shark in tiles straight from MS Publisher. I didn’t know how much paper and printer ink that was going to take, and I was running dangerously low on printer ink. We had ordered some more, but had ordered the wrong pack of cartridges and would not be getting the correct ones until Tuesday. Then I had what turned out to be a fortuitously great idea, to call my friend Tom. I knew that Tom had a projector at his house that could project from computer onto a screen or wall. I thought that if he was home in the afternoon, I could swing by, project the shark image, trace onto some newsprint, and continue on with some pattern making. He told me to come by. When he saw what I was working on, he was excited for a bit of distraction from the drudgery of the paperwork he had been doing. It turned out that he had done some similar activities as part of architecture school. We got the image projected to the size I wanted, and he talked me into using some higher-quality paper than the newsprint I had originally planned to use.
He then offered up some information I didn’t even ask about regarding transferring the image to textiles. He described a process where you punch small holes along the pattern,

sprinkle powder through the holes,

and transfer the pattern. That way, the pattern can be reused indefinitely without destroying it. In the case of the shark image, it could be useful for maintaining the layers of the white vs. gray. I was excited to try this. I felt like my Montessori-educated kids, punching out the pattern. Baby powder worked great for transferring the pattern onto the gray felt.

I had to figure out what to use for the white felt, though. I went to the kitchen, checked out the spice cabinet, and eventually tried out the cinnamon.

It worked, and brushed out of the white felt afterward quite well. I think that it helped that I used the cinnamon *after* the powder and thus had some cinnamon mixed with powder. It seemed to brush out more easily than the test spots I did with straight cinnamon. I used the cinnamon both for the white on the shark as well as for the lines on the soccer ball.

I used the powder transfer method to get the orange and yellow portions of the mouth and "smash". I cut out the teeth freehand, as well as the eyebrows, eye, gills, and nostril.
The best way I could think of to render the lines on the soccer ball was to do a tight zig-zag on my sewing machine using black thread, following along the cinnamon-dotted lines. The black patches were cut out from black felt, pattern transferred by baby powder, and adhered with Tacky Glue.
Once everything was transferred, I cut, trimmed, and glued. The gluing on the shark was an iterative process over a few days to get all the edges firmly glued down. The same goes for the rest of the banner.
Next, I got all of the other text on the banner printed the correct size, mirror image, and adhered to the correct color of felt. This was something that I could pass on to some other parents who helped out with cutting. Tip: use small zipper bags to hold words or phrases, and write the contents in Sharpie. This makes it much easier to stay organized and lay out the banner for gluing. Reuse the bags by scribbling out previous contents and labeling current contents.

Monday, September 1

I realized that the shark fins and the “Blue Sharks” text would stand out a lot more if they had some offset shadowing in black. Just a little more effort for a really sharp effect? Sure, I’ve done this much already…

Gluing, gluing, gluing.

Names to white waves. Shark fins to white waves. Basically, as elements were cut out and could be glued to each other (but not to the banner yet), I would start gluing. As the glue dried over the day, apply more glue to get edges firmly glued down.

Notice how the fold lines are gone from the shark and the background. I used a towel between the felt and steam iron, not sure whether direct contact would melt the felt. Not worth tempting fate at this point!

Tuesday, September 2

Initial gluing of two layers of Blue Sharks text, one white, one black. Overlapped them initially, taped them with painter tape to maintain alignment, then offset them and glued white onto black.

Wednesday, September 3

After I got all of the cutting back from the other two parents who helped with the cutting, I trimmed and made sure we had everything. I did the banner layout, tacked everything down with Tacky Glue.

Thursday, September 4

Did a nearly final gluing to try to get all edges adhered.

Friday, September 5

Cut wind vents around first bump of all background waves,

shark nose,

top of soccer ball.

Did final gluing.

Saturday, September 6

First Game! Banner was a big hit with the kids!

Wrap Up

In the end, I went to the following four stores for supplies:

Home Depot (PVC supplies and rebar stakes)
Joann's (felt, thread, glue, spray adhesive)
Dollar Tree (blue painter's tape)
FedEx/Kinkos (copies)

The blue tape probably could have been purchased at Home Depot, and the copies could have been done at home had my ink not have run out in my printer. Strictly speaking, in retrospect and with preparation, everything could have been accomplished by visiting only two stores, Home Depot (or something like it) and Joann's Fabrics (or something like it).

Here was the final cost breakdown:

		number	unit price	price	discounted price
Home Depot	PVC 10' lengths	3	2.22	6.66	6.66
	PVC 90 degree	2	0.35	0.70	0.70
	PVC caps	4	0.39	1.56	1.56
	rebar	2	2.26	4.52	4.52

Joanns	felt	10.5	2.99	31.40	26.69	15% discount
	thread	1	1.97	1.97	1.67	15% discount
	glue 8oz	2	3.99	7.98	6.78	15% discount
	glue 4oz	2	1.99	3.98	3.38	15% discount
	spray	1	3.97	3.97	3.37	15% discount

Dollar Tree	tape	1	1.00	1.00	1.00

FedEx/Kinkos	copies	1	3.84	3.84	3.84
					subtotal	tax (9.25%)	TOTAL
					60.18	5.57	65.75

We kept the price to a minimum, cute to a maximum, and learned a few things in the process. Everyone wins!