Scrappy little bird mobile

This is the easiest little project to do even if you are a beginner in sewing. It can be accomplished quickly and will use any colour or pattern of scraps which you fancy.

You'll need:

-Piece of paper
-Fabric scraps in colour or pattern you prefer
-Stuffing (can be synthetic stuffing or you could use more little fabric scraps if you dont have synthetic stuffing)
-Embroidery Floss
-Buttons or beads
-Yarn (just a strand about an arms length)

First of all you'll need to pick your fabric pieces. I made this mobile with 4 different solid colours of linen scraps, but you can make as few or as many birds in as many colours as you like and from whatever fabric you have left over.



Now take a piece of paper and fold it in half. Then take your smallest piece of fabric and mark the width on the folded edge of paper like this...



remember to leave fabric for seams at the edges. Now from the marks you made draw a shape like this...

proportionally, the shape is probably twice as long as it is wide. cut it out making sure you dont cut the fold and you should have a shape like this...



Cut the pieces of your fabric out by pinning the shape to them and allowing for seams, it should look like this...



now fold the fabric shapes in the same way the paper shape was folded, with the right sides of the fabric facing each other , and stitch from the folded edge down both sides of the shape leaving the bottom open, giving you this...


Now turn the shape the right way round, using a pencil to poke the points out, like this



Do the rest of your fabric shapes and you should have a pile of little bird bodies


Now get your stuffing and fill the little birds


When each one is filled turn the lips of the hole in and bring them together


Pin and stitch down the seam as close to the edge as you can



When they are finished you should have a little pile of cushions like these...



Now it's time to get creative, take the embroidery floss and use it to make these little pillows into little birds, pick one end to be a beak, push both sides of the pillow together flat and stitch a triangle for the beak, pick a point to stitch on your eyes and the same for the wings. Now, if you are better at embroidery than I am, which, lets face it, wouldn't be hard, then this is the moment to shine, use your fabulous skill to make extraordinary little birds (my husband had a hard time believing mine were birds at all!!) Anyway, these are the basic little birdies I turned out...


Now do the rest of your birds...


Now take your length of yarn and start connecting your birds.



If you have beads, use the beads threaded between the birds to separate them. I didn't have beads, I used buttons just to decorate it a little...


Once they are all threaded on snugly you're finished.

You have a lovely little string of birds and you used up some of your fabric scraps.