A much more personal blog...

A close relative of mine has just had a baby! Yay! The entire family are delighted and everything is funkydory!
I decided to make a hanging mobile for the baby. Textiles is one of my big areas within art & design; hand sewing, embroidery, screen printing, knitting, I absolutely adore it. I'd bough an enourmous pack of felt on an impulse buy at Trago Mills, I'd been pottering around with it, making things like this:

 Vintage Rose brooch.

I told you I like the new My Little Pony...

I made Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie brooches.

All hand designed and embroidered by me.

I figured felt would be the easiest material to use, having already experiemented with it. Considering it's light, durable, simple to cut and stitches beautifully. Plus it's soft and has a massive appeal to children because of it's range of bright colours. Not forgetting the popular toy Fuzzy Felt.

I had already decided I would hand stitch it all, I felt my sewing machine would probably eat the fabric. Additionally it also gave the mobile a very quaint 'handmade' feel. I chose animals as my theme, something simple which I could be creative with.

I made Alfie the Lion first...

Then Billy the Elephant, Toby the Parrot and Fred the Tiger

By this point, I'd turned the dining room into a mini studio:

 

Dad helped me make a frame out of MDF wood, which I painted a bright green. I also decided to attach the animals by ribbon to the mobile. 

Using Bondaweb, I glued on pieces of fabric to the back of each animal. This hid the exterior stitching plus the eye catching fabrics hopefully will keep the baby amused, especially the pink sparkly one.

Here's the card I made too:

I know it's not especially exciting, but I'm not a fan of big flouncy cards with masses of text and twee illustrations. I thought something simple and modern with a handmade touch would look nice. I added a crayon string from the balloon as well.

Rarity, Rainbow Dash & Pinkie Pie (c) Lauren Faust & Hasbro