A Mobile for a Little Man

Life is pretty exciting these days! Things seem to be changing (for the best) every day, and every time that I turn around someone else has great news to share. Right now, I am most looking forward to the arrival of two special little people this fall. Two of my cousins are expecting babies, about one month apart, and what's more exciting than that? 

During my last visit home, one of my cousins mentioned she wanted a bird mobile for her little man's nursery. I instantly thought of all of the fabulous ideas I've spotted online (mainly Pinterest), and asked her if I could sew her some little birdies. She agreed, and I couldn't wait to get started on my own addition to this sweet babies space. 

She had picked "Night Owl" in Natural as her inspiration fabric (this will adorn the cushions on their glider), so on Sunday we went on a little shopping trip to find some coordinating fabrics for the little birds. 

The colours were PERFECT and I couldn't wait to get home and start working on those little birds. Of course, a ton of birthday party stuff got in the way and it wasn't until late last night that I finally had the chance to sit down at my Mother's sewing machine and get to work. For those of you interested in how I went about making these birds, here's what I did.

After stumbling across this blog post via Pinterest, I printed off the pattern found here and started tracing my shapes.

I used plain white chalk for the darker/coloured fabrics, and pencil for the neutral fabric that you can see pictured above. It worked well, and then when I started cutting I found most of the fabrics edges frayed - pretty badly too. My Mom suggested I buy some fray check to keep everything smooth while I worked, and let me tell you - this stuff is fantastic. It smells pretty bad, and left some white residue on my fingers when they came in contact with it - but it did the job wonderfully.

Now for the sewing part. The tutorial that I read suggested hand stitching these little birds, with the rough edges of the fabric sticking out. I tried, but the weave on all of the fabrics was too loose and wouldn't really hold my hand stitches - so we opted for the sewing machine. We tried the first one with a blanket stitch, and it looked pretty cute, but for me was too much of a pain. For my others, I just used a regular old stitch, and it worked great.

I wasn't able to get any more pictures as I was flying solo on my mission, but what I did was sewed the head onto the body and closed up the entire back of the bird. I then sewed half of the belly closed and then half of the other side of the belly, leaving me enough room to stuff the bird. Once the fiber filling was in there nice and tight, I finished sewing the bird closed. At the moment, I have three birds finished, and I am almost done the fourth. (My bobbin ran out before I closed up the fourth bird, and I had no desire to fill a new one at 1 in the morning). Here are the three so far...

I still need to add eyes, and I also plan on adding some little brown felt beaks to them to make the ends look more clean. It's such a fun little project to work on, and has given me a bit of a break from only working on birthday party projects. I can't wait to share the final product with you once it's hanging in the nursery (which is still in progress).

Have you been working on any fun projects recently? Have you ever tried making any small stuffed animals, or your own mobile?