My friend has one month left in her pregnancy. To both our excitement, she is going to have a baby girl. So naturally, I needed to make her a baby-related craft. Now I remember these as “baby mobiles” but often when I see crafted versions, they are called “chandeliers.” I don’t know if that’s a way to make us feel like we can hang such things in our non-baby households (which we totally can) or if I’m just old-fashioned. What do you like to call them?
Anyways, here’s the finished mobile (above) and I’ll give you a quick walk-through on how I made this baby (pun intended) happen.
First thing, you need to make the lacey pouf thing-a-majigs. I had some scraps of old lace from my grandmother that I chose to use up. I cut the lace into small circles, with the guidance of a mini embroidery hoop, I cannot cut a circle freehand to save my life. I popped a paper coaster in the back to keep it still and then snipped the edges.
So once you have a circle, fold it in half and then either in half again or in a triad. You’ll get a bit of a triangle-like shape, consider it a petal. Make three-four of those and gather the tips to make a pouf-flower-deal. I clipped mine in place with clothespins to hold them in place for the next step.
Now that you have some nice little lace poofs. You will want to stitch up around the tail poking out of the clothespin. I knotted the thread and strung it through the inside and up out of the tail before sewing them together so as to hide the end. You could extend the thread a long way for hanging the poofs but I chose to just tie it off and trim the thread and use a different string to hang them.
Around the time you’ve finished catching up on Better Call Saul, you should have a collection of lace flower/poofs/poufs/bulbs/petals/whatever-you-want-to-call-them. I made 5 whites, 4 pinks, and 3 blues. Now put those to the side and prepare your hoop.
I am using the inner piece of an old, large embroidery hoop. You could use the outer, I just already used that piece to make a dreamcatcher a while back. You need two sticks, mine are just old pieces of bamboo. I don’t know about you, but I have quite a few laying around. Cut the length of the sticks to about the diameter of your circle.
Form an X with the sticks and glue or bind (or in my case, both glue AND bind) where the sticks connect. Pop your X in or on (however it fit, mine fits inside one way and on top the other way) and glue them in place. I honestly just used some basic tacky glue, hopefully it stays together. Now back to the cute part of this mobile (chandelier).
So at this point, I was worried all these pastel lace poofs weren’t girly enough and decided to add some pearl beads. (I didn’t use the pink ones because they are not rounded.) I didn’t trust regular thread to be durable enough so I used some beading thread that I, once again, just happened to have on hand.
I did as before, knotting the thread and stringing it through the lace flower from the inside through the top. Use string that is cut a few inches longer than you want the pouf to dangle. Then, at random points, I strung on a bead. I found I needed to tie some of the bigger sized pearls in addition to just looping through to keep them in my desired position. Repeat this for all your lace-y bulbs. Now back to the hoop.
This is optional. The mobile looks really cute with the embroidery hoop showing but I wanted to give this one a bit more finish. And of course, it was still not girly enough. For the hoop covering, I grabbed a floral ribbon/sash strip that was in my grandmother’s lace box and folded it over a lace ruffle to hide the ruffle’s raw edge. You can see it pinned in place in the photo above. I sewed it once, normally, to keep it folded and attach the lace. Then, I sewed it with a loose stich so I could lightly gather it a bit. Now to put all the pieces together.
I didn’t take a photo in between the steps here, my apologies. I tied my lace poofs onto my hoop. I did this while the hoop was hanging so I could better see how they would fall. I do not recommended doing that, try to plan the lengths of your flowers and where to place them ahead of time so you don’t hurt your shoulders and neck as much as I did. I arranged the flowers like so:
- white poofs on the hoop part, placed as though on the points of a ‘star’
- pink poofs on a slightly higher level than the white and placed on the X part, one on each section
- blue poofs higher up but also on the hoop part, following the points of a triangle
Glue the fabric around the hoop, I used hot glue this time, and you are done!
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