Baby Mobile - Hooty Hoot Owls!

Earlier this year, I went with Farrah to our favorite little gift shop in Columbia, The Butterfly Tattoo. They specialize in cute gifts for girlie girls and funky baby products.

Trent and Kara were expecting their first baby and Farrah had heard through the grapevine that Kara had fallen in love with a particular crib bedding at the boutique. It was the perfect solution to their office gift.Of course, as soon as I saw the print on the crib bedding, I was in love. Infatuated is probably a better word. "Silly Owl" by LittoKids Inc. is the bedding. And boy, oh boy! It is adorable!

Inspired by retro designs, it features this cute little owlie (I named him Arnold) surrounded by a kind of fleur de lis meets mid-century pattern in orange, white, gray and brown. It rocks. So super perfect for a little baby boy (or girl).

With that in mind, I decided to give them the gift of handmade: an owlie baby mobile.

The first step was to find a usable image of the owl. Harder than it seems, LittoKids has very few closeups of their bedding. Silly company. I finally found an image that some dummy like me had uploaded :) Yay for dummies!

The image had a few issues so I used photoshop to touch it up and mirror it to use as my owl pattern. Cute!

When doing any kind of hand-stitching project with numerous matching felt guys, I advise you to make one first and figure out what you are doing before moving on. That's what I did!

Owlie Parts (Cutting):

My first step was to decide what kind of parts I needed, in what color and to make a pattern for those parts. After making the pattern from the original image, I cut out all the little owl body pieces.

Here's what I ended up having:

2 - full body - brown

1 - breast - orange

2 - wings - orange

1 - eye foundation - orange

2 - eyeballs - white

2 - owlie corneas - black
(not shown)

1 - beak - black

2 - feet - black

1 - heart - orange

Wow. That's a lot of little pieces! And a lot of little pieces leftover too! If you're a packrat like I am, you end up keeping all those little pieces for weeks until it drives you crazy!

After cutting out the little pieces, I assembled the front of Arnold's body.

Owlie Parts (Sewing):

First, I added his little orange breast using a running stitch. I used 4 strands of a matching orange embroidery thread to attach the breast to his little brown body.

Next step, I attached the wings and orange eye foundation in the same fashion.


Now for his eyeballs. I used the normal 4 strands of (white) embroidery thread to attach the whites of his eyes using a running stitch.

Finally, add his little eyeballs with black!

I nearly forgot to stitch his beak and heart on last!

After I put Arnold's front pieces all together, it was time to give him some dimension.

Starting at his right owlie ear, I began attaching Arnold's back to his front using all 6 threads from a matching brown embroidery skein. At his bottom half, I had to remember to add his cute, little legs into the stitching. His legs are just single pieces of black felt.After binding Arnold together everywhere but the top of his head, it was time to add his stuffing.

The hardest part to stuff in the owlie was his little wings. I stuffed his bottom half, just a tiny bit of stuffing at a time. After he was pretty plump in his southern region, I added a little bit of stuffing into his wings. I had to use something (a pencil) to get that stuffing to the end his little wing tips.

After stuffing my owlie, I stitched up his head. Arnold the Owl's body is all done!


I was able to successfully add a ring to the top of Arnold's head for adding his hanging string. Yay me! I just used a couple of black embroidery threads and stitched in on there firmly. Finally, I added a string to hang him to the mobile!

Then I finished Arnold's 3 brothers!

I'm pretty sure little Clark likes them since in the picture below, I was told he fell asleep on his belly and rolled over to look at his owlies during the night! I'm sure that was the reason...