Happy Friday friends. It may be just me, but I'm a little in denial that we are steamrolling into Thanksgiving and onward to Christmas. This is my favorite time of year so I like to soak up every minute but holy, this year sort of blind-sided me. It could be the chaos of moving or having a baby and toddler and the fact that all of my days sort of blur together - who knows. Speaking of baby - friends, Quinn was seven months old last week. SEVEN months. She's officially closer to turning one than to her birth. How did this happen?? She is a mess too. She's into everything and hates to be still. A while ago I had asked someone to make her bedding (because my sewing machine and I are on a break) and due to all different circumstances, the bedding was finally finished this week. It just so happened to be the same week that we had to lower her mattress because she tried to flip herself out of the crib. Yeah, seven months old. Trouble people, trouble.
Anyway- as my child flings herself (literally) into her first year, I have been trying to finish her nursery. Mom of the year over here. One of the many things that has been on my list for her room was a mobile. I had a lot of trouble with this for a few reasons. The first was that I needed the scraps from her bedding to finish it, but the other was that the lady at the fabric store thought I was a touch crazy when I was (poorly) explaining my plan to her and gave me the wrong interfacing. That's a whole other story, back to the delayed mobile.
I had been spying mobiles all over Pinterest and I had made Macie's so I knew I could get one done for Quinn too. I really wanted to have cute stuffed elephants hanging on it (wow, that's a weird sentence) but I couldn't get them to work out. The elephants kept turning out like giant misshapen pillows so I had to move to plan B and make some cute flat elephants that could sway.
To create my cute flat elephants (again, weird sentence), I made a photocopy of Quinn's elephant fabric and then enlarged the elephants a few times to make a good pattern. It's such an easy way to get a pattern. After cutting the enlarged elephants out I was ready to go.
After my failed interfacing from the fabric store, I went back and got two-sided Heat and Bond. This stuff is great. I love it. It is SO easy. Seriously:
1. Iron fabric
2. Cut a piece of Heat and Bond
3. Iron the rough side to the wrong side of your fabric
4. Cut the fabric into whatever shape you want (the Heat and Bond stiffens it some)
5. Peel the paper off the other side of Heat and Bond
6. Iron it to your other piece of fabric.
Yup. That's it. To make it easier on myself, I pinned the elephant pattern to the fabric and then cut it out before ironing it to the second piece of fabric (step 4). I also laid a piece of ribbon between the fabric and Heat and Bond so that when I ironed the second piece together, the ribbon would be stuck in-between. After ironing the two pieces of fabric together (step 6), I cut the rest of the elephant out.
I used an embroidery hoop that I had spray painted white to hang my elephants. Using a hot glue gun, I glued the ribbon (attached the elephants) to the hoop and then covered the inside and outside of the hoop with some sparkling ribbon to add a little something to it.
My poor mobile was missing something so I shot of a picture of it to Miranda (that's how we do things) and she suggested some solid colored circles. That got the juices in my head working - finally. I remembered that I had some cute purple felt hearts from the sweet sprinkle some friends had thrown for me when I was about to pop Quinn out. I loved the idea of using them in her room so I had saved them and this was the perfect time! I glued two hearts together with some thin nylon string (think fishing line) in-between. After tacking them to the hoop as well, I tied all the ribbons at the top together, made sure it was even and TA-DA. Quinn finally has something to look at! Maybe now she won't fling herself out of her crib!!
