Small Projects - spring dragonflies

 

Sarah Waldo and Christine Chitnis recently surprised us with this craft project that is just perfect for the beginning of Spring. We first met Sarah when we were looking for new designers to feature in a small photo shoot last year. Sarah Waldo Designs are all organic, use plant based dyes and sustainable production methods and also manage to be super stylish.
Christine has a lovely blog called Lavender and Limes.

Sarah Waldo's website.
Christine Chitnis' blog.

Materials:

-Vintage wooden clothespins

-Assortment of fabric

-Fabric stiffener
-Wax/ Parchment paper

-Paintbrush

-Two embroidery hoops (2 sizes)

-Hot glue gun (regular glue will also work)

-Scissors

-White thread

Make:

1. Choose fabric for the wings.

2. Trace half of a large wing and small wing onto scrap paper and pin onto the fold of your chosen fabric.  Cut seven large wings and seven small wings.

3. Cover a surface with wax/ parchment paper and lay out all of the wings.  Using your paintbrush, saturate each wing with fabric stiffener.  Hang the wings and allow them to dry.

4. While the wings are drying, attach the embroidery hoops together using thread.  This will give you the tiered mobile base.

5. When the wings have dried, attach one small and one large wing to the clothespins with a drop of hot glue. 
6.Then tie a piece of thread to each dragonfly and hang them on your hoops at varying heights.

7. Stand back and admire your beautiful springy work!

Comments

[katy]

Darling! I've seen lots of tutes for butterflies but not for dragonflies ... great idea.

[Rachel goldmark]

super cute!!!

[Online pharmacy]

Really interesting...

[cristina]

This is a good project. will do it for my sweet little daughter.

[Rachel]

Can you explain what you mean by "attach the embroidery hoops together using thread"??? I am very interested in doing this project but that part doesn't exactly make sense to me.

[olivia]

Understandably! You can't see in the photo but the hoops are different sizes. Hang the smaller one above the larger one and attach them together with thread to give the mobile a tiered hanger. You could probably leave this step out and still have an attractive mobile.