diy juggling balls

i’ve been wanting to teach myself to juggle for aaaaages, so i set about making myself a set of juggling balls during the summer. i regrettably left them at my dad’s before i got a chance to do any actual juggling, but i had lots of fun making them so that’s something : )

here’s a pic of them at various stages of made-ness:

 you will need: scrap fabric, scrap paper, pen, ruler, needle, strong thread and rice or lentils or something along those lines.

1. decide how big you want your balls to be – you can do this by drawing a circle to the desired size, measuring the radius (height of leaf shaped template), and halving this (width of leaf shaped template).
2. with these measurements, make a leaf shape.
3. on fabric - cut around your leaf template four times per ball, leaving room for seams (i actually drew straight around the template with a biro on the reverse side of the fabric).
4. right sides facing, sew these together leaving one seam open enough to put your lentily filling through- back stitch or running stitch, doesn't matter so long as your stitches are fairly close together so no filling falls out!
5. fill with filling – make it as compact and full as possible.
6. sew up remaining gap – ladder stitch is good for this.
7. do this twice or however many times more to get a set of juggling balls!

lazy scarf pillow case diy

it’s been such a long time since i last blogged! lots has happened – i graduated for university, was a reviewer for a month and moved house. moved…into an unfurnished house…with no income with which to buy furniture to fill it with I’m having to get creative (oh what a shame).

so! pillows! the most obvious thing to fill a front room with! and my local bargain shop thing sells 18 inch pillows for a pound : D but, oh no! there are no fabric shops in paisley : ( but fear not – there’s at least 10 charity shops within reasonable walking distance. but oh no! i left my sewing machine at my mum’s!

and so the lazy pillowcase was born…

you will need: a largish square scarf (most of mine cost £1/£1.50 from charity shops), a pillow, a needle and thread.

1. place the pillow in the middle of your scarf so that the corners of the pillow are pointing to the middles of the scarf’s edges.

2. pick up the corners of the scarf.

3. while holding the four corners of the scarf together, spin the pillow until it is quite tight.

4. allow the twisted bit to make a nice twist.

5. with your needle and thread sew one big stitch through the twist in such a way that it does not untwist.(you want to go straight through the knot here - i only did a couple of stitches as i may want to use these scarves as scarves at some point!)

6. enjoy your very lazy pillow! the knots look quite cool but obviously they're uncomfy to sit on...so like, just flip them over (see first pic of post) : )