Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Elephant Mobile


Elephant Mobile

This elephant mobile is one of the first baby crafts that I made. Matthias and I were about to move and I was going through all of my art stuff trying to figure out what I could throw away. Since I had still had a lot of leftover material from other projects, I decided to sew up these little elephants. I figured it would be a one afternoon project, but in the end, I did two and made about 8 little guys. They were really super easy.

Originally, I thought I would use all of the elephants for one mobile, but I only needed four. I took a cheap musical mobile, cut off the hanging animals, and hung up my elephants in their place. Very cute and Jonas loved the music. I attached an old plastic pearl chain at both ends to two more elephants and then hung them over the baby stroller so that Jonas had something to look at. The last two elephants ended up just hanging in his room on the wall.

This is really a great starter project, since you can’t mess it up.

Here’s the how to:

Take an index card and draw an elephant on it. Take another card and draw the ear. Cut out the ear and lay it on the elephant. Now draw a line where the ear should go on the elephant and then cut a slit through the index card. Now cut out the elephant. Your patterns are ready.

I used leftover material and some blue fleece. I used the fleece as the back of every elephant and for all of the ears. This way all of the elephants had something in common. Lay the elephant pattern on a piece of material and draw around it. When you cut out the elephant make sure to leave about a quarter inch. Make sure to also draw a line where the ear should go through the slit. Then cut out the elephant ears out of the fleece.

Now sew the ears on each of the elephant patterns making sure you sew it on the front of the material. I only sew the part where the ear attaches to the elephant so the ear can flop. Then put one fleece elephant and one material elephant together with the ears side touching. Sew all the way around leaving about one inch unsewn on the butt of the elephant. Then turn it all inside out. You might need to use a tweezers to pull the legs through.

Stuff the elephant with polyester filling. I use a pencil to stuff the fillng down into the legs and trunk. Then sew up the butt of the elephant. Add a tail with some yarn or embroidery thread and sew an X for an eye. Finished!

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