It’s Only Wednesday

The last couple of days have been the type of days where I spend the time counting the minutes until David comes home to save me from the kid-induced chaos.  The type of days where I make brownies at 10am and then try to not eat the entire batch before 5pm.  I know comforting myself with food is cliche but I really like brownies.  :)

Anyway, one of the things that helps me get through is if I can find the time to make something not immediately consumable – so I made three of these fabric beach balls.  Little Katie was really enjoying playing with the one that I made for Tommy two years ago (which he wasn’t so crazy about sharing.  See above about the brownies.) so I made her one.  Then Zoe wanted one of her own (see above about the brownies).  And then I made one more, adding the ribbons into the seams as an extra thing for Katie to grab and to play with.

Its an easy, fast pattern to make and is great for scraps of fabric.  One change to the pattern that worked better for me was on the end “buttons”.  The directions call for cutting the circles, then pressing in the edges 1/8 of an inch, then sewing them onto the end of the ball.  I am not very good at pressing to begin with, much less something that is supposed to be at 1/8 of an inch AND in a circle.  I’m sure there’s some trick to it that doesn’t involve burning myself and cursing but I haven’t gotten that far yet.  So, instead, I just did a quick running stitch by hand around the outside of the cut circle, then pulled the two ends of the thread together until the circle edges were gathered up nicely and pressed that flat.  It is very easy to sew them on once that’s done.

I tried to get a picture of Katie with her new ball but they all came out like this:

She likes it.  Yay!