Here is a free crochet pattern and tutorial for making a baby mobile with little sea animals hanging from strands of sea weed.
I finally finished my Baby Mobile! And it couldn't have come at a better time. My baby is now 2 months old and starting to recognize his surroundings. This mobile has him mesmerized!
I made the mobile with 6 Sea Life animals that I created over the past couple of months. Well, actually I had them all done before my son was born but didn't have the chance to write up the patterns or assemble the mobile until after he arrived. For those of you with kids, you can understand how busy it can be adjusting to your first.
Here are the Patterns for the Six Marine Animal:
From left to right, Top row: blue Chromis, Squid, and yellow Tang.
Bottom row: Ochre Sea Stars, Octopus, and the Jellies.
My husband is pretty handy at woodworking and so he wanted to contribute to the mobile. He made me this hexagonal ring to hang the animals from and a wooden stand to clamp to the edge of the crib. You can use whatever mobile hanger you have available. Amazon has a pretty decent one for less than $15 usd.
Once I had my layout for the animals, I had to decide how to attach them. I thought the mobile needed a touch of green, so I decided to create seaweed strands to hang each animal.
For the strands, always work in the back bumps of the chain to create a clean finish.
Seaweed:Row 1: ch 12, starting with the second chain from the hook: slip stitch 5, ch 16, starting with the 2nd ch from the hook: sl st 5, ch 10.
You should now have something that looks like the image below.
Slip stitch onto the top of the animal, paying attention to the center of balance so that the animal hangs the way you want it to.
Row 2: sl st 5, ch 6, starting with the 2nd ch from the hook: sl st 5, working along the original chain again: sl st 10, ch 6, starting with the 2nd ch from the hook: sl st 5, working along the original chain: sl st to the end.
You can vary the length of the chains to create random looking seaweed strands. Try making some of the branches longer or space the branches closer or farther apart.
I decided to make all of my seaweed strands roughly the same (though I did not always count my chains). Since I made 2 jellies and 2 sea stars, I opted to hang the pair of animals with a simple strand of chains instead of with seaweed branches to keep it less busy. All in all, I am rather happy with the results!
