Holy cow, mobiles are expensive! That was my first thought when I started sifting out what I wanted to buy vs. make for our nursery. So, I made one. Even better – I made one with fabric scraps from the beautiful quilt my Mom made for the baby! I spent a stupid amount of time drawing out silhouettes until I thought they were just right – I was trying to mirror the animal shapes from the Dwell zoo shape sorter that we bought him (see it here*) and initially had a bird instead of a rhino. I sent a picture of the animals to my Mom who said “What’s that orange thing?”. Shortly after, my husband said “What is this one?” and the bird was banished and a rhino replaced it.
I bought the X shaped crossbar from a thrift store – it came with grody, grimy little pandas on it which I cut off. I then bought the turning, musical box (circle shaped) off Ebay. The wool balls were from TaDaaStudioFelt on Etsy and I bought wayy too many, not sure what I’ll do with the rest of them.
I cut out 2 silhouettes of each animal (one mirrored so the print faced out and it matched up) and used light interfacing on both of them and machine sewed all the way around. I initially tried to sew inside out and turn so you couldn’t see the stitching, but my patience wasn’t up for it. So, I left a tiny hole and stuffed poly-fill in and then machine stitched back around. I trimmed up the edges and painted on some Fray Check* to be on the safe side.
Each wool ball is threaded on embroidery floss – I used the same nice thick plastic needles that I used for my Fall Pumpkins. I made sure to triple knot above and below each ball so they stayed nice and tight, and then both knotted and hot glued them into the X-bar’s holes.
A trip into Home Depot provided me with an easy ceiling hook/anchor and some strong white plastic twine – voila! Mobile!
If you have any use for the basic silhouettes, I uploaded them in a PDF for your printing enjoyment below!
Fabrics used:
Orange – Jester in Tangerine by Michael Miller
Green – Tiny Elephants in Ivory on Green by Daiwabo
Blue – sorry, can’t find!
Yellow – Polka Dot Generic from Joann Fabrics
alanna
Thursday 5th of February 2015
This nursery is so cute! are you having a boy or a girl?
Stephanie - Swoodson Says
Friday 6th of February 2015
Thanks Alanna! This was for my son - now I'm due in another month but we're not finding out :)
Rebekah McClary
Thursday 16th of January 2014
Hi. Oh my goodness...this is so cute! Where do you get wool balls? I've never heard of them!
Thanks :)
swoodsonsays
Friday 17th of January 2014
Hey Rebekah! Thanks, the wool balls are from https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaDaaStudioFelt?section_id=10550099&ref=shopsection_leftnav_1 :)
now at home mom
Monday 19th of November 2012
Beautiful! :-) great idea to make your own! I wish I would've thought of something like this back then, it's very well done! & I really like your nursery too! :-)
swoodsonsays
Monday 19th of November 2012
thanks!!