Baby Bat-Mobile

I have a coworker who is obsessed with Batman.  And I mean Obsessed in every sense of the word.  His cute wife is pregnant with their first--a girl--due at the end of September.  We had a baby shower for her last week and I was asked to come up with some decorations.  Through a series of brainstorming I had this brilliant idea that I could string together a bunch of Batman symbols, cut out of girlish paper, make a baby mobile out of them, and call it the BATMOBILE.  I thought I was so creative.  Turns out if you Google-image Baby Bat-mobile you get all sorts of people who had the same idea.  Oh well.  My coworkers' wife's loves include the Beatles so, to include her interests in the project, I found peace sign and 60's flower clipart.

I cut out far more than I needed and, after stringing it together using a sewing machine, discovered that the mobile was twice as long as I had anticipated.  But it did look so cute hanging from the ceiling during the baby shower.

I've never made one of these before so I had to kind of guess how to put it together.  I found a couple of cheap quilting hoops at Hobby Lobby and used the interior frames (if anyone has a need for some exterior extendable frames, let me know.  I have no idea what to do with them now.)  I bought some 1/2 inch pink satin ribbon.  To create the hanging apparatus, I punched some tiny holes through the wooden ring using my heavy-duty Crop-a-Dile.  (I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's the only paper-crafting tool strong enough to punch a small hole through thick wood.)  I took six lengths of satin ribbon and threaded each through a hole, knotting each on the outside of the hoop.  I used the leftover ribbon and wound it around the outer hoop to give it a finishing touch.

The most time consuming part of the project was hand cutting each of the paper pieces.  After that was done, it went together really easily.  I think I might just try this again sometime!  Just not using batman pieces.