Baby Mason's Birds

You may recall my bird project from this post back in October. Well, I finished it! I met Erin's darling Mason when I was in NH (for Haiden's 2nd birthday) and presented the proud mama with the fruits of my labor.


These pictures don't show it well, but the birds are hanging down from the crosspiece, which swings and tips quite nicely, along with each bird turning a bit. (Pardon the poor quality, the pictures are from my cell phone). Upon presentation, we held it up for Mason and he seemed appropriately enthralled :-)

The project was inspired by the picture at left, as executed by Spool Sewing. Originally the plan called for each bird to be perched on branches which would hang from each other, and swing separately. Lovely.


Alas, I completely overestimated the balancing abilities of the birds on the light balsa dowels I had chosen. I didn't realize until I was in the thick of it that there was nothing I could do to keep the branches with the birds perched upright!! It seemed no matter what I added as counter-weight on the bottom, the bird still flipped the stick over and wrapped the lines around.


Now, I couldn't simply hang the birds - they were clearly sitting, not flying! If I had more time, I would have gone back and sewn wings on each one of them. But alas, I was to present the gift the following morning - just a few short hours away - all seemed lost!


After a good night's sleep, I came around to see reason: the 2-month old and his parents wouldn't care whether the birds were flying or sitting or what. This is simply meant to be a pretty thing for their nest. So I attached individual perches to each bird, and strung them each separately. Voila!


Perhaps I will try again to achieve the originally-intended product, but clearly more weighty branches are called for in the future. Or more cooperative birds.