fabric ball tutorial

I’m sure many of you have done english paper piecing and maybe have made a ball like this!

this one is for my son.

First you get 12 pentagon cardstock shapes, I got mine from paperpieces.com

for this fabric ball I chose 6 different fabrics- or rather my son did 🙂

I then laid out the pentagons over the fabric and cut out approx 1/4″ all the way around, here I had two layers of fabric

like this.

with a contrasting thread and needle I basted the fabric to the cardstock, it may help to pin it with a mini pin while doing it. leave the tails of thread hanging on the front (fabric side)

Then sew the pieces together with tiny stitches in matching thread.

with the ball, I have one color in the middle and the other 5 going around clockwise, with the same color in the middle, the 2nd half the colors go counter clockwise, this way, when sewn together, the colors will always be on opposite sides.

As you sew it together, as soon as you have one pentagon enclosed by the other 5, then you can remove the basting stitches and the cardstock.

At the end I heavily stuffed the ball with fiber fill and sewed it closed, even though I removed all the cardstock, the fold was still in place on the last seam.

Easy to do!

now I’m starting a ball for my daughter

Did you know that when geometric shapes go toge

ther like this to form a ball or a 3D shape, it’s called a polyhedra! I googled more shapes and have more cardstock in different shapes to make other balls, like octagons and triangles, the same shapes I save and printed for the kids to color and cut out and tape together for their own paper balls.

I partly loaded a customer’s quilt on the frame, so I can work on it later or tomorrow, we’ll see

thursday I have a doctor’s appt, then friday I’m going to the sewing expo in raleigh!