Completed sea creatures baby mobile

I finished the Baby Mobile with not a moment to spare before the baby shower last month. I've just had time to post the images here.

   

The whale did turn out to be the centerpiece as designed.  I ended up using a small wooded dowel for the upward water stream, some .22 gauge flower wire for the arms with the sea friends, and a wooden clock face for the mounting plate.  The flower wire for the arms for the sea friends provided enough support and made it easy to bend the arms until everything looked right.  I had more wire coming off of the top so that it could be hung easily above a crib or pack and play.  Everything was wrapped in either light blue yarn or light blue felt.

Here are the stars of the show.  Ms. Seahorse!

Ms. Octopus!

Mr. Starfish!

And last but not least, Mr. Sea turtle!

Overall I was pleased with the design and concept.  Had I allowed myself a bit more time, I would have liked to change the design on the mouth for the whale.  I probably would have used some felt or gave him a silly tongue.  

For more information and a link to the patterns I used for reference, check out my project page on my Ravelry profile: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/cmmiller/baby-mobile.

I'll post soon about my next project plan!

Crochet Baby Mobile Sketches

My first craft for the new year will be a baby mobile.  My stepsister is having a baby in March, so I'd like to crochet an amigurumi plush mobile for her baby shower.  I thought about designing something that would be gender neutral.  The idea is to create the mobile, but make the individual pieces detachable so that the baby will be able to play with them later on.


For the first design, I went aquatic.  The idea is that the large whale will be in the middle and the water stream coming out of the blowhole will be the different arms of the mobile with the other sea creatures.  I drew more animals than I would need, but the skill is with the editing.

The more I thought about the idea of the baby being able to play with the toys later, I thought (with the help of my husband), that it might be nice if all of the toys could be stored in the larger centerpiece of the mobile.  That led me to my second design of the Barn and some barnyard animals.  The barn doors would open and the animals could go inside.  That would mean of thinking of a way of reinforcing the barn piece without stuffing it completely.

For my next sketch, I went against my normal instincts and went insanely girly.  The rainbow will be the largest piece of this mobile with other various girly things coming off.  The challenge here is finding a way to make an amigurumi 3D rainbow that looks good.

If I was going to make something girly, I thought I'd go with something in the totally opposite direction. This mobile would not have a centerpiece, but the framing at the top would be some sort of race track or something (going back to the idea of almost every piece being usable).

The more I thought about making baby mobiles, my thoughts turned to what kind of baby mobile I would make for my own if I ever decided to have one.  It would be the nerdiest baby mobile on the planet.  I didn't pick a centerpiece or think about the layout very much because I knew it wasn't something I was actually going to put a lot of time into.

And the winner is ... the Ocean design!  I've started with the whale, which will be a white one.  I've started with a magic ring and the basic stitch progression for a growing circle using a series of increases. When I've decided the whale is fat enough, I'll start to decrease.

I'll post more once I've made some notable progress.