How To: Jazz Fest Flag Making

Every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festivalgoer knows that the best view of Jazz Fest — besides looking at that first piece of crawfish bread right before your first bite — is the countless flags and banners waving in the wind marking the territory of each festival group around the stage.

This flag marks home base and induces a sense of comfort for many festivalgoers. It’s a final destination when trying to make your way through the dense crowd with your arms stacked full your favorite festival foods and handfuls of beer or daiquiris. It’s your people.

Now, not every group of festers have a signature flag — I’m looking at you hog flag — but while we are all celebrating what would have been Jazz Fest it may be nice to add a little touch of normalcy to your at-home festival.

This weekend I made my own flag and came up with an easy way make it fun for anyone involved.

Materials:

• Pillowcase, bed sheet, or, you could also use poster board)
• Pencil
• Paint, markets, crayons or colored pencil
• Stencils or print out of design
• Workspace
• Item to secure flag, including a broomstick or pole and tape
• Scissors

Directions:

Now, these directions are according to me and how I created my personal Jazz Faux Fest flag, but you may adopt a different approach.

1. Put on festival attire to get into the mindset.
2. Crank up the New Orleans Magazine Jazz Fest playlist on Spotify to set the tone for the day.
3. Decide on stencils or design for your flag.
4. Pick the perfect pillowcase for your aesthetic.
5. Grab the paints that may or may not have dried up since the last time you used them.
6. Head to the backyard where the sun is shining and where it’s OK to get paint on the deck.
7. Set up your station.
8. Take your pencil and begin to map out your design on your pillowcase (or sheet or poster board) with the opening of the pillowcase open to the left.
9. Once the design is sketched, decide on paint (or marker or colored pencil) color and distribute small quantities onto paper plate or some surface.
10. Paint design.
11. Wait for paint to dry — crucial step.
12. Dance to Spotify playlist and snag a bite of crawfish bread while paint dries.
13. Pick your own assembly adventure
    1. If you are working with a pillowcase – take scissors and cut four-inch slits into both sides of the opening of the pillowcase (line up the two sides of the opening of the pillowcase and cut each side at the same time).
    2. If you are using a sheet, you’ll cut the slits into just one side of the sheet — to the left of the design.
14. If you are using a poster board, just cut out the design or cut out a square or pennant shape around the design
15. Hang up new flag in the middle of your at-home Jazz Faux Fest backyard setup.
16. Enjoy.

Share your Faux Fest flags with me at kelly@myneworleans.com or in the comments below.