Handmade Baby Goods IV: Cloth Ball

Introducing the homemade pumpkin ball. This design was inspired by a product I've seen elsewhere, but I've tweaked it a bit, especially to make the segments of the ball smaller so that it's easier for little hands to grab.

And a few snapshots from the making of:

 My paper pattern: 

 Turning the moon inside out with a knitting needle to get the end

This is pretty simple to make: 

• The basic shape for the segments is a crescent moon, made larger for seam allowance and to still be adequately sized when stuffed.  I made ten segments out of five different colors of fabric, with two segments of each color.  I just used the leftover fabric from the cloth stacker that I made a few months ago.

• Crescents are sewn together with right sides of the fabric facing together and a small opening left at the top to allow them to be turned right side out and be stuffed. 

• Once stuffed, the hole is hand stitched together using the baseball stitch. 

• Then the "moonses" (as Chobie called them as he stole them from my work area at the kitchen table and ran off with them to stuff his papas boots full) are sewn together at the ends.  I did this with handstitching the tops of two moons together to start with.  Then I sewed another one to one of the first two, then added another one to the third moon, then sewed the fifth onto the fourth, the sixth onto the fifth and so on, so that I was only attaching two moons  together at a time.  When tenth moon was sewn to the ninth, I also sewed it back together with the first.  This step is done for both the top and bottom ends. 

This could also be made with semi-circles, but I liked the idea of having a hollow center and individual segments that would be easy to grasp.  I think that some little guys around here are going to have lots of fun seeing what they can stick inside the ball and roll around.