It all got started when my husband (Jacob) and I were living in St. Louis anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first baby, our son Hewitt. The trend of taking monthly pictures of baby during the first year was already well underway in the world-at-large, but naturally I wanted to put my own twist on it. I tried to find a unique little something to lay beside him but nothing I came across caught my eye. At some point along the way, I saw a pennant on the wall of a friend's nursery that she had DIY'd and the light bulb went off!
Making and selling pennants wasn't even an ounce of a thought at this point - never ever even crossed my mind. I mean, really though, I didn't even own a sewing machine.
Off to the craft store I went! After buying some felt, fabric glue, and finding some dull scissors in the junk drawer, I started constructing the OG 'Hewitt' pennant. I cut the block letters H-E-W-I-T-T in what we now call our cream color, trashing a few and re-cutting the get the height and size I wanted. I lined them up on the dark gray pennant background and glued them on. Then came the mustard siding and ties. A little more fabric glue and we were all set! His custom pennant sat on his newly repainted dresser in his sunroom nursery for a couple months and eventually made it into the hospital bag in anticipation of announcing his arrival to the world!
As a long-time lover of handmade gifts, I began making these Name Pennants for friends' kids and babies until they started asking for me to make some for their friends' kids and babies. I was now hand-sewing (yes, picture a needle and thread in between my fingers) the felt letters onto the backgrounds. It was time, y'all... 'a sewing machine' made it's way onto my Christmas list.
When the new sewing machine was delivered to our front door in December of 2018, the side-hustle began! Did I know I would soon be adding a night-job to my full-time day job? Nope, but with a few orders per month, the pennants scratched my creative itch. I spent my days teaching elementary PE and after I put Hewitt to bed, a few days a week I'd work the any open orders I had - might I add, at a snail's pace compared to our present-day production times.
It started to become my routine on most days. When the sun began to go down, the pennants would come out and cover the dining room table.
Even though there may be some noticeable differences between this first ever pennant and the uniformity that we have created within our products at Eventide Pennant Co over the past few years, I look at it with fond nostalgia every time I see it. It was such a fun way to mark Hewitt's monthly growth and also unknowingly the start of this small business!
More to come...
xo
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