Recently on the blog, I shared a little about our baby's nursery. one of the things specially created for his room was the crib mobile. today, I want to share a tutorial with you on how to create this crib mobile.
materials needed:
- embroidery hoop
- fishing line
- x-acto knife + scissors
- tissue paper
- embroidery needle(s)
- sewing thread
- book of your choice
- paper + pencil
- drill with a 1/16 bit
First, I read through Robin Hood looking for the best parts. you know what I mean... the meaningful parts with good words and strong imagery. the parts with the most adventure and love and excitement. this step is important because our baby will be able to read from the time he exits the womb, so I want him to have the best parts of the story floating over his sweet, little head. okay, so no. this step was more for myself. I wanted favorite parts of the story like... when Robin Hood + Little John meet, when he's reintroduced to Maid Marian, when he shoots his last arrow... you get the idea. the good stuff.
In case you haven't noticed from reading my blog, or if you know me personally, I'm a word girl. my mother has always described me as wordy. if I ever tell you a story or something that happened in a book or show, be prepared to stay awhile. I really don't mean to be. but there's just so many good words out there and I like a lot of them and I use a lot of them to say the things I say.
So, I skimmed through Robin Hood and picked out my favorite parts and marked them. these would be our clouds. next, I took the x-acto knife and begin to cut these pages out.
My little sister helped me with this project and she's a real artist. we decided it would be best for aesthetics + symmetry + balance to have two small clouds and two large clouds. she sketched a stencil for our small cloud and I did one for the larger clouds. we did this with a pencil and notebook paper and sketched until we came up with a cloud shape we liked.
then, I took the clouds and placed them on the page, over the words I wanted to be seen. because I'm so wordy, this part was a little sad + hard because I couldn't fit the entire quotation as these are little bitty clouds. I would've loved to have had the full excerpts I had chosen, but that just wasn't doable. [one way to make this work would be to mat + frame the excerpts, rather than cutting them into the shape of a cloud. that's one of my favorite, super easy crafts that makes for beautiful, yet different framed art. I have a few of these type of framed pieces in my home, ranging from hymns to poetry to stories.]
I traced my little clouds over the book pages and then cut them out with scissors. one thing to keep in mind when tracing the clouds is this: after you trace your cloud, you'll need to flip your cloud stencil over to trace your next cloud, so that it will match up when it's stitched together. this is one of the easier parts of this project.
After the clouds are all cut out, it's time to sew! we took little pieces of tissue paper, crumpled them up, and flattened them back out. this is what we stuffed our little clouds with. I wanted them to have some volume and this was the best I could come up with for stuffing. next, get out your needle and thread and get ready for the fun part! and by fun, I mean most tedious, time-consuming part. once you thread your needle, start stitching your clouds together. I would sew the cloud about halfway around and then begin stuffing it with bits of tissue paper. this part really doesn't take too long, it just takes the most attention.
I took the inner hoop of the embroidery hoop [the one without the hardware], white-washed it, let it dry, and then drilled holes. actually, I let my husband do that step. I never want him to feel left out of my projects, so I try to always find something for him to do to be a part. that last line should actually read: I always need help with at least one part of my projects, so I beg him to help me.
he took his handy drill and used a 1/16th drill bit and drilled four holes, one across from the other, evenly around. then, I took two pieces of fishing line, probably about two feet in length and inserted them into the holes on the embroidery hoop. they crossed over each other and I gathered the four strands together and tied a knot. [this sounds confusing, but there are photos below that will make this step more clear] after this, I cut a shorter piece of fishing line, threaded that through the embroidery needle and into the top of the cloud, and tied a knot. I took this piece of fishing line sewn onto my cloud and threaded that through the hole on the embroidery hoop and tied a knot [several times so it wouldn't slip through]. I repeated this step until all four clouds were fastened to the hoop. I didn't measure the exact length of fishing line the clouds would hang from. I eyeballed it and purposely made them to hang at different lengths. I did intentionally hang the two larger clouds across from each other on the hoop and the smaller across from each other to create balance + symmetry.
my husband placed a screw hook in the ceiling, and after cutting one more piece of fishing line about two feet long, I looped it under the knot that held the four strands together. then we hung it from the ceiling.
I wrote this post just weeks before our baby arrived. he's here now! even though he's not sleeping in his crib yet, he took a little nap in it one day and I couldn't resist snapping a photo of him under his sweet little mobile.
