First I have to apologize to any regular followers I may or may not have, for my rather long hiatus while I devoted the bulk of my time to child rearing. Babies are a time suck, especially when you also work full time. I had major craftiness withdrawal. My youngest is now 15 months old and I'm finally at a place where I can put both kids to bed and then have a couple hours of adult time. This is a big deal for me, as adult time = knitting and TV. I've been making up for lost time, so prepare yourself for an onslaught of knitting posts.
But this one is not about knitting. This one is about adorable baby crafty felty stuff.
My sister is expecting a little bundle of male heir this December, and so I felt it was my duty as aunt to make him a little sum'in-sum'in. Expecting the rest of her friends and family to make and purchase plenty of hats, blankets, and booties, I decided on a mobile for his nursery. I love the idea of a sweet little baby staring up in fascination at a collection of colorful fancies, developing all kinds of extra folds and nerves in that tiny baby brain. The mobile I had for my kids was purchased by my mother in law, and I always felt a little bad that I didn't make them something more wonderful. So I'm compensating with my future nephew.
The theme for the little chap's nursery is safari animals. This method would work for just about any theme though; sports balls, planes/trains/automobiles, birds, fairies, the options are endless as long as you have a basic shape. I found some simple animal shapes online and pasted them into a Word document, then re-sized until they were about 4-inches or so across. I carefully cut out the shapes and used them as templates to cut my felt. You can get sheets of felt in a variety of colors from any craft store for fairly cheap. You just need to cut 2 of each shape. I think I went through about 5 or 6 sheets (they seem to be about 8.5"x11") of felt.
After my pieces were cut, I stitched them together in a contrasting color thread, and stuffed them with some leftover batting I had laying around - it really doesn't take much. You don't want to make a pillow, but just give it a bit of dimension so it's more interesting to look at. Put the two felt pieces together then start the stitching and stuff as you stitch, to make sure you get every nook and cranny of your piece without having to shove batting in and risk ripping or deforming the shape.
With all the pieces cut, stuffed, and stitched, the real fun begins. Cut detail pieces in complementary colors and apply them to the piece using hot glue. The difficult part is cutting the right size and shape (remember to make 2) and making it look the same on both sides. Definitely err on the side of simple over detailed. Think of it as a graphic icon. You really just want to convey the general appearance of whatever you're making. For example: the giraffe below is polka-dotted. It still looks like a giraffe, even if a real giraffe wouldn't necessarily recognize it as its own kind.
The next step is eyes. Again, I didn't want to try for too much detail and end up with something that looked weird. So I just knotted black thread and ran it through from one side to the other. Yarn would work for that too, and would make larger eyes.
While you have the hot glue out, find the spot where you want to hang the piece and separate the two felt pieces just a tad. If you can get in between the stitches that would be optimal. Shove your string through (I used brown yarn), and hot glue the felt pieces together to secure it in place. Easy. That sucker isn't going anywhere, believe me.
I ran into the most trouble putting it all together. Getting it to hang evenly is tricky, especially when you're not particularly into measuring and weighing. You know, planning. I'm sure it would have been much easier had I done that. In hindsight, I think I would rather have used embroidery frames and hang each animal from the frame. But I did not do that. Instead, I bought a 1/4-inch dowel from the hardware store and painted it dark brown (actually, I used a brown marker because my paints were in my son's bedroom for some reason, and I was not about to risk going in there and waking him up. But I would have painted it if I could have accessed my paints).
I cut the dowel in half and tied the two pieces together in the center. I suspended an animal from each end of the dowel, with one in the middle. I hung them at varying heights for interest, but keep in mind this affects how level the thing hangs. The weight of each piece is also a factor. Secure the yarn/string to the dowels with hot glue. After the shapes are suspended, tie another piece of string (this time I used kitchen twine) to the ends and gather them all up in the center, then tie it there, making sure everything looks even. It's nice to have a helper loan you their eyeballs here. Make sure you tie a string to the top so it can be hung.
To hang, I would screw in one of those little metal cup hooks (like this one) into the ceiling, and suspend the string from that. Bingo bango, one of a kind baby mobile, suitable for even the most discerning newborn tastes.
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