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!