As the United States continues to reflect on what we are grateful for, many have rediscovered the pride of adorning their homes with the beauty of Old Glory. As I look down our street, full of old homes dating from the turn of the 20th century, it truly looks very handsome with a flag flying from each home's porch. We have two flags flying from our porch, but the more I look at our porch with its large columns, the more I want to do additional patriotic dressing.

When looking for reference materials, the web is a wonderful source. The American Legion has a great site with all of the particulars, especially the rules and regulations for displaying the flag. For example, one of the rules for the more common situation where the flag is hung from the "hoist", is that the field of stars should be on the observer's left. If the field is visible to the public on both sides, different rules come into play which you can check out on the American Legion site.

I thought about making my own flag to the specific dimensions of our porch. Again, the Legion site was very helpful and I had some fun putting together a spreadsheet to determine the dimensions of each of the parts of the flag. The 5-pointed star had me a little nervous at first, until I checked out the Betsy Ross site and saw how she dazzled George Washington and others who came to her to make the first flag. This site shows how you can, with one cut, make a perfectly symmetrical 5-pointed star.

After some additional thought however, I decided a flag across the entire porch would diminish the regalness of the flag. I then considered swags, which do look wonderful on homes and many older buildings. The recommended color distribution for patriotic swags is for blue to be on the top, then white, and then red on the bottom (Flag code section 8-d). I have also seen several different designs with red and blue and I believe they all look very nice, but I was still looking for something else. Then it struck me as I saw some banners hanging from a horizontal pole. Why not a vertical red, white and blue swag that went from the top to the bottom of each pilaster? My wife thought it would look too blocky, so we came up with a tapered banner which measures 18 inches across the top tapering to 3 inches across the bottom. We decided we needed some material on the bottom for ease of sewing and anchoring.

First, one must realize that any outdoor fabric will fade and discolor over time. As an old house owner, I also knew there must be certain materials that would hold up better than others, the question was what they were.

One option was a screened material. For this option, I would custom order the screening of the material and just hang it. Some flags are made in this fashion and do very nicely. The disadvantage is that the color will tend to fade relatively fast. With some protection from the elements, our American Legion chief has seen flags made like this last 2-3 years. Another option was outdoor nylon. This option would mean buying the outdoor nylon colored individually with red, white and blue. The material would be cut to make the swag, then sewn together. This is also similar to another type of flag. Our Legion operator, Charles Leach, said that this is the type of flag he purchases when obtaining flags for our Main street pole displays. He said they usually last 3-5 years before fading or wear causes them to be replaced.

I was all set to order some of this material when I noticed that one of our insurance agencies had a 2-year old canopy that was made of a royal blue canvas. This canopy still looked very nice with very little fading even though it had southern exposure. I found out that the material is Sunbrella (TM) and is commonly used in marine and boat applications as sun shades and awnings. The company guarantees the color for 10 years, although many of the people I talked to said it is not unusual for the color to last much longer, so I ordered some from our local supplier.

Sunbrella (TM) is very stiff. The representative suggested using a hot-knife to cut it so that the edges would seal and minimize fraying. Then, it was simply a matter of cutting out the material and sewing it together. We also sewed in a rod pocket along the top to secure the banner to the column.

Once you dress up your house patriotically, just sit back and enjoy the pride you and your home will have.