Making a mobile

Hi, my name is Brie, and I am compulsively crafty.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I will be attempting to craft multiple items for the Bun's nursery, including blankets (mostly done), 3D art for the walls, knitted pouf (done!), a crib skirt (waiting for the crib to be assembled, hopefully this weekend!), and a mobile.

If you are a regular reader you may remember these guys:

Monsieur Fox and Professor Mouse, at your service

They have a couple of friends, a dapper skunk and be-scarfed bear, that I knitted in the spring with the intention of making them into a mobile.  At the last knitting night I also made three little birds according to a Christmas ornament pattern without a clear intention.  It was my wonderful husband that suggested incorporating them into the mobile instead of making one more full sized animal and I jumped on that opportunity for saved labor like nobody's business (sorry, bunny with boots, you shall never be).  So I had all my animals, an embroidery hoop scored for $1 at a local Goodwill, some cheap ribbon from the Michael's bargain bin, and 3 hours on a rainy Saturday.  What was this girl to do?  Whip out a mobile of course!

The first step was to separate the embroidery hoop's inner and outer ring and to attach the four big animals to the inner ring.  I didn't wrap the inner ring because I like the look of unfinished wood and thought it would be a nice contrast to the graphic ribbon to be wrapped around the outer ring.  To attach the animals I took a long length of yarn, tied it around the inner ring, then moved the knot in the string under the stitches in the animal's back, making it invisible.  Using stitches in the back also had the added bonus of avoiding the Hangman look for each little guy.  Now they look like they're flying instead.  I eyeballed where they would be glued down to be evenly spaced, and messed with the string lengths until I liked how they looked (identical lengths of yarn didn't look very good).  Forgot to take pictures at this stage, sorry!

The next step was actually the most time consuming; I wrapped the outer ring in the ribbon, only gluing it down at the beginning and the end of the ring, making sure to leave the little screw unwrapped (so I could use it later).

Please excuse the multiple items in the background, I did this in the living room so I could watch the game!

I then popped the inner ring with the animals into the outer ring, making sure that none of the spots where the animals attached were right under the screw.  Then I just tightened the screw to make sure everything stayed secure.

Next I took the length of ribbon that was left after wrapping the outer ring and glued it to the mobile at 12 and 6 o'clock so that the whole thing can hang from the ceiling.  After attaching the three birds together in one long line I hung them from the middle of the length of ribbon that stretched across the ring.  It's a little hard to see in the picture since I am no skilled photographer, but picture the birds hanging in the middle of the hoop:

And I'm done with making it! Obviously you will get a better sense of how it looks once it's hung from a hook in the ceiling above the crib, but doing that necessitates the crib being assembled in the room, which can't happen until the carpets are replaced on Friday (hussah!).  So stay tuned for further mobile news, I'll likely do a full nursery craft tour once I'm done with everything, as well as other individual craft blog posts as they are done.