I’m not a big fan of name badges.
I know they're useful and all that but I’m still not a fan, and if I’m honest I’m less of a fan of those handwritten by someone else. Unless they have fabulous handwriting of course, but then again it’s still a name badge.
When it was mentioned that while volunteering on my knitting group’s stand at the Newark Wool Show that we should wear name badges provided I almost had a quick rethink about it all. Yes, that’s how much I don’t like wearing name badges.
But I reasoned that I couldn’t let the organisers down, as that would be even worse than wearing a name badge, and so I thought I’d make my own. But time was tight the show was that weekend, and in the week in the lead up to the show life got in the way, a lot.
I remembered that I had a wire brooch with my name on and I thought if I could find that I could use that, I found it and so an impromptu name badge I made.
Yes I know I could have just worn the wire brooch, but I wasn’t sure if it would show up on my clothes as much as it would against a dark background, and at the time I had no idea what I’d wear, plus I’m not much of a brooch person either!
I knew I didn’t have time for knitting or crocheting, or even sewing - so fabric and glue it was. This is what I started with:
scraps of material, including selvedges
the wire name brooch
a lanyard (saved from a previous need to wear a name badge most likely at a work conference - but at least it was bright pink!)
a cardboard tag from clothes purchase.
I quickly realised that my wire name brooch was wider than my backing card - the joys of a longer name - and so I cut my wadding wide enough to extend the width of the badge.
Next I stuck the fabric in place - on both sides, covering the central section with a plain navy fabric so the wire brooch would show up clearly. I’d planned to use the ‘hole’ on the clothes tag, but my fabric covered that and extended beyond the top of the tag, so I used my vintage ticket clipper to make a single hole, hoping that the lanyard would hold my creation.
I left it to dry and set overnight under a pile of heavy books, and hoped.
And it worked, and now it’s the best name badge on a lanyard I’ve ever had. I wore it at the show alongside the handwritten one, and I’ve got it ready for next time it’s needed, though as much as I like it, I hope it doesn’t get too many outings!
