I never really liked the idea of a blog, but I thought about it and the Melbourne summer has been one amazing shitness that "cabin fever" has been a natural re-occurrence for everyone living in this city. It was then, while I was sewing, I thought, what a nice idea to be able to archive most of your thoughts and ideas for the whole world to see... ! At the moment I am working on another Softie. For a friend's baby. I spend a lot of time making things for babies of late. Its about the only thing at the moment I am able to figure out by looking at the pictures, at this stage. I would post some pics of the progress (yes I know you are dying to see them) but my camera is at the hospital.
At the beginning of last year, I was able to run a straight stitch with my sewing machine that had been divulged by dust underneath the stairs without f@$king the whole thing up. I was stoked. So I will post up some "creative" things I have done thus far that may also inspire you should you ever find yourself with a lot of spare time. I am no where near where I would like to be, but I do pride myself on creating some cute little cross stitches that are actually fairly simple to do with your own design.
To start you off I have tried to explain as best as I can how to make a Baby Ball...
It takes a while to do and is great to do while you are in front of a movie and are in complete hibernation with NOTHING else to do. Patience is a virtue for this project...
1. The first step involves taking a piece of paper and creating a pentagon shape as accurately as you can! Next, cut out 12 of these (the ball will be finished with 12 pentagons shapes all sewn together).
2. Next step involves gathering your material. You only need scraps for this. I just went to Lincraft and bought a few Fat Quarters which are handy to have around anyway when sewing soft toys and they cost barely anything. The great thing about them is they are already mixed up for you so you just need to sort out the material combination you want.
3. Next step involves cutting around your 12 paper pentagon shapes with the material you choose. Pin your small piece of scrap fabric to the pentagon paper (paper on the wrong side of material) and just cut around the paper pentagon adding on 2-2 and a half cm for seam allowance.
4. You should end up with 12 pentagon fabric pieces which will all have the each of the 12 paper pentagons pinned in the middle of the fabric. This is simply going to hold the ball in shape when putting it all together.
5. Fold the edge of the fabric piece over the paper and sew down the edges with any colour thread. Don't worry about sewing through the paper or making it neat and pretty, this will be ripped out and is purely there to hold the paper in place with the fabric making it easier to sew with. Do this with all 12 pieces of fabric pinned to the fabric.
6. After the edging is all done, you can start to piece the puzzle of the ball together. It is easier to do one half of the ball (sewing 6 pentagons together which will look like a flower centre with 5 petals around the flower centre's edge). Ensure that you are doing a whip stitch to piece each pentagon together. They should be right side facing eachother and the edges touching to whip stitch. You want to make sure that when the ball is turned right side out, you cannot see any of the stitching.
7. After you have created your two halves of the ball it is time to join them together continuing with a whip stitch. Do this ensuring that it is done inside out. See the picture below as to how it should be beginning to look if you are a little confused!
8. Once you start sewing it all together you will see that the ball is starting to take form. Keep joining all the edges up until you have gotten to the very last edge which will be just one side of one of the pentagons. Leave this open. You will need soft stuffing which is easy to get at any sewing shop. Start filling the ball in with this, pushing it all in. Don't make it too tight though as it won't be very soft then. If you want, add a jingle ball in the middle of it. I find it makes it a little more exciting doing that than being a noiseless ball of fluff. Once you have stuffed it and feel content with the shape of it, blind stitch the last edge of the ball. And Voila! It should look like a ball. If it doesn't you didn't follow the instructions properly.
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