You may have long outgrown the need to look at a hanging mobile suspended above your crib to lull you to sleep, but few people will outgrow the comforting and soothing sight of a mobile swaying and turning in the gentle breeze.

Here’s how to make a Felt Air Balloon Mobile,

Materials your will need :
7 coordinated shades of felt
Matching Emboidery Floss
A print-out of the Felt Air Balloon Pattern
Cardboard
Scissors
A needle

1. Cut out the shapes from the pattern template

2. Cut the felt shapes from the paper template cut outs.

Here’s a post on the best way to cut felt.

3. You should have 3 pieces for each size of the balloon, S, M, L and one ‘cross-shaped’ cut out.

4. Trace the cloud shape on the cardboard. This cardboard will be placed and sewn inside the cloud-shape felt as a filler, as it can get felt clouds might get flimsy without the cardboard inside.

5. You could either trace the curves inside of the cloud shape like the above picture and cut it inside, but it can get rather finicky to cut

So as to save some time, you can go with cutting the outside border of the cloud shape. But make sure that the cardboard is smaller than the felt pieces, as you will need some spare margin from borders of the felt piece to sew 2 pieces of felt together.

6. Here are the final pieces of felt that have been cut to make this Felt Air Balloon Mobile.

You are now ready to sew them together.

7.  Separate the strands of thread from the Emboidery thread, you will only need 2 strands of thread to sew the Felt Air Balloon felt pieces together.

8. Use the Air Balloon paper cut, fold it into half at the dotted lines and pin it on 3 pieces of felt. This folded cut out will provide a good reference point to sew a line of running stitches.

9. Sew straight stitches to the edge of the 3 pieces of balloon felt. Then fold the 1st and the 3rd felt piece into half upwards, while keeping 2nd piece or the middle white piece flat.

10. Take the square cut out and sew the edges together to make it look like an open box. Join the 1st piece from the balloon shape to two edges of the open box, then turn the balloon to the other side, and do the same for the 3rd piece of balloon shape to the other 2 edges of the open box.

11. Use whip stitch to sew the 2 pieces of the cloud shape together. Don’t forget to place the cloud cut-out cardboard inside before you close the stitches.

To sew the bird shaped silhouette, use straight stitches where you see the dotted lines on the paper patterns.

12. String and the completed felt shapes together with white embroidery thread, and do the same for the other sizes of the Felt Air Balloon.

There you have it!

Your very own Felt Air Balloon Mobile that can be used to decorate your home or your child’s room.

**Kindly note that you may reproduce materials and templates found on this site for your own personal use, and craft created from the templates only for non commercial distribution.

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Now that it’s just K and I hanging out together on the weekends, I am able to find some time to dive back into a hobby that I started about 5 years ago.

When I first started making things from felt, and gifted my first felt hand-mades to my friends a year after I left the corporate world, I had friends who exclaimed that this ‘thing’ of making and sewing stuff was really unlike me. The Rachel that they knew who just left the corporate world then, didn’t seem to be the kind who had the patience to sew or make things.

Well, taking the step into the unknown world of sewing craft have shown that I can indeed sew and can get a tad obsessive at it when I get into the momentum of making things.

The process of making something by hand, with love, care and thought is very gratifying and therapeutic. I think once anyone is able to create something and are fairly pleased with their creation, it can get rather addictive.

Back to Crafting

I stopped crafting 3 years ago when I encountered some major life changes. I moved a couple of times, but interestingly, wherever I moved to, I always made sure to bring my craft things along with me to the new place. Even though I never get to use them at these few years, I seem to have that inkling that someday I will be back crafting again.

I self-taught to learn how to use the sewing machine through the internet, and picked up tips from my friend Pauline, who is more advanced in her skills of machine-sewing. Then sewed bags, zippers pouches, cushion covers and clothes, but found myself drawn to felt and hand-sewing of the occasional ‘frivolous’ thing with felt 😛

Felt is colorful, soft and luxurious to touch and there are so much that can be made from it.

Here are the ways felt can be used;

• Home Crafts like felt magnets, hanging mobiles and ornaments, coasters, table and floor mats, buntings.

• Applique on fabric bags, pencil cases, zipper pouches,  t-shirts, children’s clothing.

• Toys like Animal Softies, dolls, bean bags, as well as a vast variety of baby toys

• Animal Figurines, collectibles for the shelf or mantle

• Accessories like brooches, pendants for a necklace, hair ties and children’s hair-clips. Key chains, sleeves and cases for mobile phones and tablets can be sewn from felt.

Making things from felt is not at all complicated, all you need is a steady hand to cut the felt shapes and learn some hand-sewing stitches.

So keen to try out crafting with felt, but not sure how to start?

Here’s a post where you can find felt in Singapore. And I will be starting a new series of Crafting with Felt posts on Catch-Fortywinks.com where I will be sharing tutorials to make your own felt craft.

*All photos in post are of actual felt creations I made from 2009-2011

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Most of the felt that you will be able to find in craft shops in Singapore are Craft Felt or Acrylic Felt.

Craft and Acrylic felt are of acrylic, polyester, rayon blend of material. It is cheaper, stain resistant and washable, however, it will start to fuzz over time, which is not suitable for making of felt toys of softies, or craft projects that you intent to keep. It tends to be thinner and the fibers are much weaker, so seams are likely tear. Thus, Acrylic Felt is best used for children’s craft, hair ties or clips, hanging mobiles, ornaments, brooches, small felt mascots.

I much prefer to use Blended Wool Felt for all my felt projects. Blended Wool Felt may be more expensive than Acrylic Felt, but it is recommended if you plan to work on crafting projects that need a variety of shades (especially needed in fashion accessories or home decor) or you intend to keep the felt craft for some time. As it is made with real wool, the feel is soft and luxurious. It is also durable, has a slight elasticity so the seams will not rip if you stuff felt toys. It is hypo-allergenic and has antibacterial properties that prevent it from mildewing. It is best used for home-decor crafting such like pillows, heirloom ornaments that you plan to keep, felt toys and softies.

Spotlight used to stock the wool-blend versions (35% wool, 65% rayon), but not anymore, so Wool Blend Felt can only be found online. See the bottom of this post on the links to buy Blended Wool Felt.

Here are some of the places that you can find felt in Singapore; 

1) Daiso – All branches of Daiso in Singapore carry Acrylic Felt, however I have found that IMM Daiso stock the most variety of colors. Felt is available in squares, each pack has varying shades of one color, so you will have to buy a few packs to stock up on a colors that you need for your projects. If you plan to make bigger felt projects, there are rolls available in some primary and secondary shades.

Address : 2 Jurong East Street 21, #03-48/50 IMM Building, 609601

2) Spotlight – You can buy Acrylic felt by piece from Spotlight, however the range of shades are limited.  It is slightly more costly than Daiso, but it make sense if you plan to get a small quantity of colors for specific felt projects.

Address : 68 Orchard Road. Plaza Singapura, Level 5. Singapore 238839

3) Golden Dragon – Similar to Spotlight in terms of variety, but the prices are a little cheaper.

Address : 101 Upper Cross Street. People’s Park Centre #02-51 Singapore 058357

If you plan to get Blended Wool Felt, these are the online stores where I bought my felt supplies:

Prairie Point Junction – they do not ship directly to Singapore, so I have used both V-Post and Borderlinx services to get the items sent to Singapore

Benzie Design, The Felt Shoppe, Sweet Emma Jean – These Etsy stores stock a wide range of colors, their prices are reasonable and they ship worldwide.

Back to post on Crafting with Felt.

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