Monday, February 6, 2012

Valentine's Day Heart Mobile

In honor of the approaching holiday, I have a cute little tutorial for you today! It's made of hearts and string dangling from a wire wreath frame that's been spray painted cream. I made it in about an hour. Super easy and I think Super cute. Which is always a win in my book! So take a look and see what you think- would you  make this?

Mobile Tutorial- Hearts Dangling from a String 
(not a country western song) 
Tools and Materials
1/4 yd. of heavy canvas
1/4 yd. of fabric of your choice
Fusible interfacing
12" Wire Wreath Frame (found in floral dept of craft store), sprayed cream (Rustoleum)
String
Scissors
Iron 
Sewing Machine w/black thread (optional)
Crop-a-dile (optional) or hole punch
Create Your Hearts
Step One: Pick out a cute fabric for the hearts and apply fusible interfacing to back of fabric, if desired. This makes the fabric super easy to cut into shapes and if you want to, you can even sketch them out before you cut on the paper backing of the interfacing.  Cut out heart shapes.Peel off backing paper. Note: You could probably use a die cut for this but I like to vary my size and shapes so I  hand cut mine. 




Step Two: Arrange hearts on canvas piece. Iron in place. You can now either skip to Step three or you may choose to stitch around your hearts. I like the scribbly border free motion stitching on my machine adds to the finished look of the hearts. I did not love the scribbled thread mess that's on the back of my fabric when I'm done stitching however, so I added another piece of fusible interfacing to the back of my stitched canvas. Then ironed another piece of plain canvas to the back of my stitched piece. This gave me a simple, plain canvas backing to the hearts.

Step Three: Cut out around heart shapes leaving some of your canvas backing as a border. 







Assemble Your Mobile
Step Four: Punch a hole through the top of your hearts. This can be either right in the middle or from one side of the heart or the other. I mixed it up so that some of my hearts dangle at an angle. Tie a piece of string to the heart through the hole you just punched. Leave enough length to your string so that the heart can hang down as far as you'd like. (about 6-20") The height of your mobile is up to you, as is the number of hearts you choose to make. 


 Hanging Your Mobile
Step Five: At this point you can either add wire to the top of your wreath form to create an "x" (spray cream again), or you may do like I did... which is figure that out after the fact and have to use what you had on hand because you're doing the final assembly on site. If you choose the second option you'll use your string and tie a piece of string across the middle of the wreath frame, tautly. Then, tie a second piece of string across the frame, creating a +. Where they intersect, tie a third piece of string around both strings where they meet and use this to dangle mobile from ceiling. (Because I was in a school building that has those fake ceiling tiles I was able to attach a paper clip to the end of my string and jimmy it up under the tile edge and over the metal framework holding the tiles in place. The alternative would to hang it from a small hook screwed into the ceiling). 

Here's a pic of the hearts dangling from the wreath frame :)
Thanks for your time!!! Hope you enjoy the project and as always I'd love to see any pics of your version show up on my facebook site. Happy Almost Valentine's Day!

Oh, and here's a bonus pic: the banner I made the same morning to go with the heart mobile. It was super easy and fun too! And I think they both made the teacher's lounge a bit more fun and hopefully gave the teacher's something new to look at over lunch. :)
So fun what a little fabric and stamps can do!


3 comments:

Single Stone Studios said...

I love the stitching!! Perfect embellishment.

Cristi Baxter Clothier said...

They both look great! Love the banner alot

Cre8tiveQueen said...

Such a great idea now if I could just somehow make the TIME to do it!
Nat =)