Baby mobiles entertain your baby for some time and serve as a charming decoration. Whether you’re expecting or know a friend who is, a baby mobile is something that might have crossed your mind. However, what if you could create your own?
Fortunately, it’s pretty simple to make a baby mobile. It can be an enjoyable project that is light on the pocket and requires few supplies. You can also customize it to better suit the nursery room, making it particularly unique for your precious little one!
If you want to make your baby’s mobile, you’re in the right place. This page describes the necessary steps to make a DIY baby mobile using felt or any other fabric. It also shows you some valuable mobile ideas that you can make afterward.
Making a Felt Baby Mobile
The first step to making any nursery mobile is purchasing supplies. This mobile requires a ring or embroidery hoop that’s approximately 10″ in diameter, some different felt or fabric colors, firm thread, yarn, and cotton balls. The materials can be whichever color you prefer.
For this DIY baby mobile, you need a needle and a pair of scissors. Still, you can use tacky or hot glue if you don’t feel comfortable sewing. With the materials out of the way, you can start creating your crib mobile! All you need to do is complete the following steps.
1 – Wrap the Embroidery Hoop
Completely wrap the embroidery hoop in yarn until you cover the metal. You can begin by tying a bow to secure the string as you start to bind it. After wrapping it, you can untie the bow and interlace the ends. Also, you can cut off the leftover yarn. Try to keep the string tight together so the hoop’s material neither shows nor unravels.
2 – Create Your Desired Shapes
Make sure you cut two of each as you have to sew them together but remember to leave a small space open. You can do this with a thread and needle or a tapestry needle. Afterward, stuff the felt or fabric shapes with batting or cotton balls and sew it back up correctly.
3 – Cut the Thread Pieces.
It would be best to make as many as the number of felt or fabric pieces you created. You can divide it into equal or different lengths, resulting in some hanging at the same height or some lower than others.
Afterward, take some thread pieces and attach them to the shapes by sewing them into their sides toward the middle-top part. This way, you can ensure the decorations hang straight.
4 – Connect the Thread to the Embroidery Hoop
Remember to bind a secure knot around it. It would be best to space the thread evenly around the embroidery hoop, so your pieces hang at an equal distance. You can glue the knots to the inside of the hoop if you want to make sure they don’t ever budge.
5 – Attach a Strong String to Hang the Embroidery Hoop
You need to tie three string pieces to your embroidery hoop at equal distances apart. These should be approximately 36″ long. After attaching them, you have to loosely tie them together in the middle by wrapping the strings around each other.
6 – Position and Hang Your DIY Mobile
After tying the loose knot, hang it to see whether it leans one way or another. How the mobile hangs is up to you. If you’re satisfied with how it currently is, you can finish up by tightening the knot to secure it permanently.
Finally, with the leftover thread, fasten a loop at its end so you can hang it on a hook. You can set the height by cutting it a bit or tying the loop lower. Now, you should have in your possession a gorgeous and finished baby mobile.
Other Charming and Adorable DIY Mobiles for a Nursery Room
Most of these DIY mobiles can add quite a bit of charm to a nursery. They’re so colorful and fun that your little one is sure to enjoy gazing at them as they move.
Fortunately, if you made a felt baby mobile by following the previous steps, you might find it considerably easy to make any of the following. Whether you are looking to have more mobiles to vary your nursery room or want a gift for the baby shower of your friend’s child, all of these projects guarantee an enjoyable, pleasant result.
Colorful Ribbon Crib Mobile
It’s one of the easiest baby mobiles to make. All you need to do is grab an embroidery hoop and knot some colorful ribbons on it. Although this design is straightforward, it has a chic look. You can finish it in about an hour or even less.
Additionally, you can add some toys to hang from this DIY baby mobile. You can check a more in-depth tutorial at Suzanne’s blog.
Wooden Woodland Animals Mobile
With this baby mobile, you can complement a nursery that sports a country look. It requires an embroidery hoop, wooden animals, and wire. This idea is perfect for the nursery room of a little boy, so keep it in mind if you’re expecting one or have a friend who is.
As this DIY nursery mobile uses cutout animals, it doesn’t require much work apart from tying up the embroidery hoop, which is already explained here. You can find many of these woodland sets available on Etsy.
Colorful Hot Air Balloons Mobile
You can make these hot air balloons mobile with felt or other fabric types. They’re easy to make, even for people without any sewing experience at all. You can gather most of the required materials at any local craft or general store, and they’re affordable.
This baby mobile design is more intricate than the other ones, so it takes more time to complete. However, the result is a significantly fun and cute baby mobile. You can find a more thorough tutorial for this DIY mobile on Joy Kelley’s site, along with free patterns.
Pom Pom Crib Mobile
Pom poms are pretty easy to make, regardless of the material you use. With them, you can have an incredibly adorable crib mobile that requires little effort. You can use different fabric colors and create pom-poms in various sizes.
Creating a mobile using pom-poms is incredibly fun. Not to mention, the result is super cute.
You can either use your own template for these balls or follow another tutorial that provides its own. For example, Mari’s project offers a more detailed step-by-step to create a chandelier mobile.
Gold and Gray Feather Mobile
This crib doesn’t use actual feathers, but it looks exceptionally gorgeous once it’s done. You can make this with any other color, but these two give it an elegant appearance. It’s perfect for both boys and girls, so it makes for a good baby shower gift.
You can either carve the feathers by hand or use a die-cut machine. Either way, it’s an easy process, although one is more time-consuming than the other. You can find a DIY tutorial by Erin Spain that goes deeper into making the feathers for the nursery mobile.
Yarn Ball Crib Mobile
The only thing this adorable ball baby mobile requires is a colorful string and an embroidery hoop. It’s considerably easy to make, and it doesn’t take too long to assemble.
This mobile serves as an excellent gift, considering you can match the yarn balls’ color to any nursery decor. Whether your friends have a baby girl or a baby boy, the little one is sure to enjoy this mobile for their first few months of life. Here is a more comprehensive guide to creating a yarn ball mobile.
Paper Cloud Crib Mobile
The paper might be the most versatile material to use when making a DIY baby mobile. You can pretty much make anything that comes to mind with it. In this case, these adorable clouds are ideal for putting your little ones to bed.
As it’s paper, they’re super easy to make and accessible as well. The paper clouds hang with strings from an embroidery loop, and you can add as many as you want. You can even add other cute pieces to decorate the mobile further.
For example, paper airplanes are a good choice, but anything goes. You could create paper boats and even paper lanterns. Sure, they’re harder to make or even warrant a purchase, but they’re lovely additions for your baby’s cloud nursery mobile nonetheless.
Laurel Clark made a more creative and detailed guide on making these baby mobile paper airplanes, so check it out if you have doubts.
Star Mobile
Although this design is more suitable for a boy’s nursery, it can go well in a girl’s one too. It doesn’t require many materials as well. You only need glitter paper and cardstock. You can pick whichever color you would prefer. Of course, you could paint it as well.
Of course, you need a line to hang them, some screws, wooden dowels, and other hardware materials. As you can put up this one in nearly no time, this project could serve as an excellent quick gift for your friend’s baby mobile.
Here is a tutorial by Bettjo that shows more details about making the hanging star nursery mobile.
Bead and Driftwood Mobile
Even a few beads and a piece of driftwood can become an excellent baby mobile. The materials in play make it an exceedingly affordable crib. It may even be free if you already have beads on hand.
You can finish building this mobile in about an hour, making it a quick DIY crib mobile alongside the colorful ribbon option. Find a more extensive explanation in the blog post by Erlend.
The Bottom Line
There are many gorgeous and creative ideas involving beads, stars, foam, felt balls, and more when it comes to creating a nursery mobile. All of the mentioned ones only reach the surface of what’s available.
Most of them have embroidery hoops in common. Once you begin to make a nursery mobile and finish, you should be somewhat capable of taking any of these ideas and making them a reality.
