Finished project: bird mobile

I have been not so crafty lately (more on that at the end of this post), but over the weekend I finally hopped to it and finished one of my WIPs: the bird mobile. This is a birthday gift for a friend whose party is this coming Saturday, so I was just in time to finish over the weekend. The entire project is modeled after the one on Spool Sewing. The pattern was very easy to follow and I'm very pleased with how this project turned out. 

The birds are all completely stitched by hand, stuffed with Poly-Fil and flax seed (and then brown rice, when I ran out of flax with a few left). The only problems I ran into came when I attached the birds to the branches (gathered over Labor Day weekend at the park; none were pulled from trees, they were all picked up off the ground). Like Spool, I stitched my birds to the sticks using a dark embroidery thread. But once I held up the sticks, the birds were too heavy from the flax/rice and were sliding backward. Enter the handy dandy hot glue gun. That did the trick. 

The next issue I had was in the balancing/hanging. Perhaps I was a little overzealous in the flax/rice stuffing? The birds were heavy and kept turning the branches, so I ended up not being able to use the gold eye screws on the bottom sticks, only where the bottom bird stick was attaching to the one above. (Yeah, this part is hard to explain!) Instead, I threaded the monofilament through the birds and attached it to a gold eye screw on the bottom of the branch above. You can kind of see some of that in the detail picture below: 

Other than some trial-and-error with the hanging, though, this project was pretty easy and should be a wonderful birthday gift! I apologize for the crappiness of the pictures in this post. We've had pretty much non-stop rain here for 3+ days, so lighting all weekend was horrible. 

I mentioned above that I've been not so crafty lately. This is due mostly to me feeling pain (!!!) in my hand and arm while hand-stitching. I know! It freaked me out. BUT, there is some good news. I have not gone to a doctor, but I am paying very close attention to my body and taking it very easy. On Friday night I stitched up the tails of the six remaining birds and that was fine. On Saturday I sewed the birds to the branches and hung the mobile, and that went fine as well. Yesterday I did quite a bit more hand-stitching on my still in-progress circles mini-quilt. I took a couple of breaks and was very careful with my posture, and I feel fine. Well, I do have a little bit of a pain in my elbow today, but the fact that it's not residing in my hands or my wrists is definitely a plus for me. So, dear readers (all 2 of you), rest assured that I am being careful and conscientious and will definitely see a doctor if this becomes constant and predictable. For now, I am just being watchful and taking notes. And I should have something to show from that circles mini-quilt later this week!