T Shirt Butterfly Mobile

I've been doing a lot of things with t-shirts lately, leaving me a nice big ol' bag of these:

T shirt scraps.  They're big enough pieces that I can't bear to throw them away, but too small to use for any of the bags or clothes I've been making lately.

I'm also 37 weeks pregnant, and the doctor says I could go any time...so yes, I am in baby mode.  Big time.  Which led me to make this....

Butterfly Mobile!  (With my two year old Munchkin, of course...who should have still been in bed since it wasn't even 6 am yet!)

I've seen a number of buttefly mobiles lately, most of them made from scrapbook paper.  And I love them all!  But I dont have hardly any scrapbook paper, and even if I did I'd have to go to my mom's to use her Cricut...so I got creative and used what I had on hand.  (Mostly.)

First off, I took this idea from Sew She Sews' polka dot crib mobile tutorial.  (Seriously, click on that link and check out her mobile...if I wasnt so in love with butterflies right now I would have done the polka dots like she did!)  Anyways, I had just found two embroidery hoops at goodwill for $.50 each, and then got home and realized that the screw in one didnt work quite right.  But it would work PERFECT for this mobile!

And, I confess, I did run to the craft store to pick up one little thing that I didnt have on hand...

...miniature clothespins.  This isn't the smallest size they had, I think they are 1 3/4 in.  Then I spray painted them white.

Then there's the T shirt scraps.  Just alone, they would be too floppy to really look like butterflies, so I took one layer of scrap, put some Heat'N'Bond on it, then adhered it to another layer of scrap.

Then I spent what felt like FOR-EV-ER finding a butterfly template I liked (I ended up tweaking a few to make my own) and tracing and cutting out 14 butterflies.

Here they are with the clothespins clipped on:

The most tedious part was tying them on...I just used white thread.  I knotted around the middle of the clothespin, then tied it to the embroidery hoop.  I tried to stagger to create a "random" effect...I'm not so good at random.  But I think it turned out alright.

And this is what the baby will see:

I think I'll be replacing this ribbon with either plain white or light pink ribbon - again, just using what I had on hand.

Well, its a hit with my Munchkin at least!

Sorry, I know enough pics already!  But I just can never get enough of this little blue-eyed wonder (I have brown eyes, so it may be borderline jealousy) and her fascination in anything I make!

UPDATE:  I'm entering this in Iron Crafter Round 7: Clothespins!

And, in case you're wondering...my baby turned out to be a boy.  But he still likes staring at the butterflies!  (I'm thinking of re-doing them but in boy colors.  But we'll see.)

 
 

I'm also linking to Craftastical's Share a Craft Link Party!