DIY Fabric Mobile

CUTE MOBILE ON A BUDGET
If you’ve even spent 5 minutes looking for a baby mobile for your nursery, you know the situation is not good. Your options are either terribly tacky box store mobiles or the oh-so-cute ones that cost a million dollars.

Yes, one miiilllion dolllarss. (Insert Dr. Evil voice, pinky to lips.)

A couple years ago, I DIY’d a mobile for my daughter’s room, but it ended up nearly sending my hormonal preggo self over the edge.

Earlier this week I shared the design for my client Chrissy’s nursery, and part of that plan was this DIY mobile. Call me a glutton for punishment, but I decided to try again at the DIY mobile game just for the sweet mama I was working with.

(Oh, yes. I craft for my clients. I’m thinking of calling this service DIFMH…”Do It For Me, Heather” Projects.)

I love this mobile for a couple reasons. It reminds me of the fabric banner  I made a few years ago that ended up in Olive’s nursery. Secondly, you can so easily incorporate your nursery colors with this project. You could even get real crazy and mix a bunch of patterns together.

I saw a picture of a similar mobile (ironically not used in a baby’s room) in HGTV Magazine, and thought the idea was GENIUS. There weren’t DIY instructions, so I gambled and tried to recreate the mobile the best I could.

This was waaaaaay easier than the mobile I ended making a couple years ago.  If I gave this a DIY rating, it would be “G” for “Go Do It”. (Wow, two acronyms in one post. Let’s not make it a thing…)

DIY FABRIC MOBILE

SUPPLIES:
-hanging wire basket (I purchased mine from World Market.)
-fabric (I used 1/2 yard each of three different mint fabrics.)
-1 yard white chord trim
-white spray paint
-hot glue gun
-ruler

STEPS:
1. Detach individual baskets from the hook and chain on the hanging wire basket.

2. Spray paint baskets and chain white. (*If you can find a white basket, this would be preferred. Once you assemble the mobile, some of the white paint chips off due to the amount of handling required to make this.)

3. Cut strips of fabric 14 inches long and 1 inch wide. (I just traced the width of the ruler as a guide for my strips.)

4. Tie strips of fabric to the bottom of the smallest basket, focusing on filling the center.

5. Hot glue strips of fabric to the rim of the smallest basket. Then hot glue strips of fabric around the mid sized basket.

6. Attach the mid size basket back on the chain. Attach the small basket underneath this. (*I chose not to use the large basket for this mobile.)

7. Cut chord trim the length of the perimeter of the top basket. Wrap and hot glue to the basket. Seal the two ends together with hot glue.

8. Trim ribbon length. *I found this easiest by hanging the whole thing on a rod in my laundry room. I used the ruler as my guide for each cut, and trimmed the ribbon on the top rung to 10 inches. I trimmed the middle tier to 11 inches and then left the bottom tier of fabric at the original 14 inches.

I hung the minty fabric mobile up in Gemma’s nursery, so I could shoot a couple pics before mailing it to California. Honestly it makes Gemma’s bird house mobile look like a wanna-be-has-been. “Minty” kind of stole the show.

Sorry, kid. Mama was just a newbie mobile maker when you came around.