Since juggling is an inherently cheerful thing, I decided to lighten the mood this week by making some balls for David, who has often expressed a wistful interest in learning to juggle.
The tutorial is from Amiel Martin, a clever pattern that went together fairly easily out of four smallish strips of fabric, backed with fusible interfacing and filled with flax seed (wh. bought in bulk cost about a dollar and a half to fill all four balls). It gets a little origami-like towards the end, as the "ball" begins to really become three-dimensional, but the photos in the tutorial are clear enough that with a little examination it's more fiddly than difficult. I like the way the strips wrap around three sides of the cube! The fabrics I used are two bright Kaffe Fassett prints, left over from a project which I will show after Christmas. The shape and the flax seed filling help keep the balls from rolling away from you as you practice!
Lest you think I'm getting good at sewing, I must offer this --
all four are like this on the second side, so I would suggest that instead of carefully matching the first set of seams, just go ahead and do it without looking, and both Xs will be just a little off, instead of one being perfect and one really wonky!
These ended up weighing a little over 150g each, and are about the size of a baseball.
Nice - what I remember from trying (unsuccessfully) to learn to juggle was sore legs from bending over to pick up the balls!
Posted by: Mary Lou | November 11, 2016 at 08:17 PM
They look cheerful, I would not ever bother to learn juggling though.
Posted by: Toffeeapple | November 12, 2016 at 10:48 AM
shouldnt he be able to do 5? ;-)
Posted by: David Beach | November 14, 2016 at 12:48 AM