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Sewing Patterns for Juggling
Marylis Ramos - 4th February, 2004.
Sewing Patterns for Jugglers
This booklet is a collection of experimental juggling ball sewing patterns that were
generated using a combination of Kaleidotile (http://www.geometrygames.org/KaleidoTile/index.html), Plate-n’-Sheet (a demo of which can be found on http://www.rlcad.com.au/),
AutoCAD, and of course, Dave Barnes’ famous Barnesy Bags how-to. Feel free to
try out these patterns and make your own set of juggling balls!
My interested in this project began with an attempt to sew 14 sand-filled suedette 100g beanbags. They are now finished, and feel very nice but I am never ever making them again =P. They have since been christened ‘Sandays’ – Peter Bone has tried them out but thought they were a bit too heavy for 11 =). I soon became obsessed with how to generate a perfectly spherical shape using fabric. I’ve tried the patterns for the 4-panels and the cube (Fergie bags = juggler object lust), and they work well. It may take a few tries to get it right though, so don’t be discouraged if your creations don’t quite look ball-like, or if the seams burst…you’ll get the hang of it very quickly. Be sure to check out the Barnesy Bags how-to (http://www.jugglingdb.com/compendium/skills/equipment/making/balls/barnesybags.html) for tips on sewing and fabric selection!
This small selection includes patterns for 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 panel beanbags based on
a lemon-shaped template; 6, 8, 10, 12 and 16 panel patterns based on a
triangular-shaped template, and various polyhedral patterns: the tetrahedron,
cube, dodecahedron, icosahedron, truncated tetrahedron, and cuboctahedron. Each
pattern is labelled according to the approximate diameter of the finished ball,
along with the number of panels you have to cut out to finish one ball. Each
pattern is available in at least 2 different sizes.
This booklet is a work-in-progress, so please don’t hesitate to send me any comments or suggestions that you may have. Happy Sewing!
Some sample images:
Here are the files to download:
Sewing Patterns for Juggling Part I.pdf (1004k)
Sewing Patterns for Juggling Part II.pdf (1.3M)
view in thread mode or date mode
post a new message14th Nov 2006
Instead a globe?
What if instead of juggling balls I wanted to sew a larger fabric globe? Would it still take only four panels? What would the measurements of each "orange slice" section be (about) if I wanted to make a globe about the size of a basketball?
4th Dec 2007
Re: Instead a globe?
check out the Silver Penny, they have a nice pattern for a spherical shaped ball
27th Jun 2007
Re: Instead a globe?
You can scale from the dimensions given to what you want. But what you get would not be a sphere unless the fabric stretches well along its bias weave, and you use a pattern with more seams. The more curves, i.e. the more panels, the more spherical. And unless you use quite stiff fabric, with a lot of thereby more-rigid seams, it will not hold its shape against gravity unless the fill holds its shape. Find an old world globe covered with printed paper, or a Mercator world map, to see how many segments were used, and over a rigid shell for a globe.
11th Jul 2007
Any more designs?
Do you have a pattern for a 32 panel juggling ball that uses pentagons and hexagons? its the basic soccer ball design.
21st Nov 2007
Re: Any more designs?
adiosk8r4evr, I don't think they have them (soccer-ball shaped patterns; the fancy name is truncated icosahedron) here, but if you want to try, you'll need 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons. Of course, you won't have the nice rounded edges, but since it has 32 sides the roundness would be very slight anyways. Another difficulty would be that you would need to have the sides be very small to keep the ball in a reasonable size for juggling.
Neat idea, though.
Neat idea, though.
27th Jun 2007
THE BEST patterns, thanks!
I have to go to the public library to get a printout, and did so tonight, with these tips: do not bother doing anything other than downloading the pdf's here and looking through all of both before choosing. I get only so many free prints, and used them up on mistakes and then found a page I would really wanted to have. I tried to avoid the pdf time by pasting the sample image on this webpage into MSWord: it is not scaled correctly.
Another mistake was going to the page at Google for leather balls: the ones here are better, and his file labelled for cubic balls is the *wrong* pattern. If the pattern you want is not here, with scaling to various ball sizes included, you don't need it.
The comment about marking the seam is a good one, especially for non-sewers: but mark with what? Felt-tip pens will bleed through many types of fabric and are permanent. Using pins through the aligned pieces works very well, if that is possible with your fabric.
And still no info about Ladder Stitch to close the fill hole, unless you Google for that: and that is what you need to close the hole.
The tip about completing the stitching and then turning it outside-out is possible only with a lot of thread slack and a long enough gap. What you can also do is just start the stitching before inverting.
And thank you, Marylis, for the Australian curved tetra pattern! I will make others, but that is the one I want now, and nobody makes them. I will do the five-segment balls too, thanks for that too, you are the only source I know.
What I do is glue the pattern cut-out to cereal box cardboard to have a firmer model to mark from. And I will try the pattern with cheap and easily worked fabric before risking the expensive faux suede stuff. If I can stand to wait that much longer for the balls I hope these will be.
Another mistake was going to the page at Google for leather balls: the ones here are better, and his file labelled for cubic balls is the *wrong* pattern. If the pattern you want is not here, with scaling to various ball sizes included, you don't need it.
The comment about marking the seam is a good one, especially for non-sewers: but mark with what? Felt-tip pens will bleed through many types of fabric and are permanent. Using pins through the aligned pieces works very well, if that is possible with your fabric.
And still no info about Ladder Stitch to close the fill hole, unless you Google for that: and that is what you need to close the hole.
The tip about completing the stitching and then turning it outside-out is possible only with a lot of thread slack and a long enough gap. What you can also do is just start the stitching before inverting.
And thank you, Marylis, for the Australian curved tetra pattern! I will make others, but that is the one I want now, and nobody makes them. I will do the five-segment balls too, thanks for that too, you are the only source I know.
What I do is glue the pattern cut-out to cereal box cardboard to have a firmer model to mark from. And I will try the pattern with cheap and easily worked fabric before risking the expensive faux suede stuff. If I can stand to wait that much longer for the balls I hope these will be.
8th Apr 2007
More tips
Small puy lentils make good filling for lager bags and have the soft feel of linseed
If you're machine sewing always work AWAY from corners of a panel that are already attached, if you work toward the corners you create a bulge where the fabric tension is uneven.
If working with a woven fabric that has bias try to make sides cut on the bias meet sides that are not where possible.
If the funnel you're using to fill the bags has a narrow part that tapers slightly, use a drill to make it's sides parallel and your filling will flow much more easily.
For machine sewing it works better it you make two card templates, one for the whole panel and one to draw the seams, it makes it much more accurate than trying to use the width of the foot as a guide. Even for a 4" ball the difference between perfect and lumpy is only a few mm wrong at the seams.
If you're machine sewing always work AWAY from corners of a panel that are already attached, if you work toward the corners you create a bulge where the fabric tension is uneven.
If working with a woven fabric that has bias try to make sides cut on the bias meet sides that are not where possible.
If the funnel you're using to fill the bags has a narrow part that tapers slightly, use a drill to make it's sides parallel and your filling will flow much more easily.
For machine sewing it works better it you make two card templates, one for the whole panel and one to draw the seams, it makes it much more accurate than trying to use the width of the foot as a guide. Even for a 4" ball the difference between perfect and lumpy is only a few mm wrong at the seams.
7th Apr 2007
Some gotchas...
I made a 4" dodecagon which weighs 550g when filled with pudding rice, which is big, and heavy and good for building muscle memory and came out quite spherical; and a 2 3/4" cube which weighs 220g filled with linseed.
A couple of points, linseed feels much 'softer' than rice which 'crunches' slightly as you squish it.
When packing the ball, pack it as tight as you can of you want a tight fill because it'll loosen. The best way of doing this is; when filling the last bit to pull the funnel out slightly, pack the fill in with the back of a pencil then push the funnel back in, hard... repeat until desired level of hardness is reached.
If you're sewing on a machine and using the foot as a guide without marking out make sure you drop the needle into the fabric, then line up the two layers and sew a smooth arc. I tried sewing a few stitches and then stopping to line things up perfectly with the result that some seams have little bumps where I've re-aligned the fabric.
The cube came out, well, rather cube-like when I did it, but I'm not certain whether that's because I didn't draw the seam on before hand, relying on the sewing machine foot as a guide.
Has anyone thought about which way the bias should go when cutting panels? I'm inclined to think you should try and randomise it as much as possible, although I think the cube might benefit from actually trying to use the bias: I cut all my squares square, whereas I think that cutting them on the bias will yield rounder balls.
A couple of points, linseed feels much 'softer' than rice which 'crunches' slightly as you squish it.
When packing the ball, pack it as tight as you can of you want a tight fill because it'll loosen. The best way of doing this is; when filling the last bit to pull the funnel out slightly, pack the fill in with the back of a pencil then push the funnel back in, hard... repeat until desired level of hardness is reached.
If you're sewing on a machine and using the foot as a guide without marking out make sure you drop the needle into the fabric, then line up the two layers and sew a smooth arc. I tried sewing a few stitches and then stopping to line things up perfectly with the result that some seams have little bumps where I've re-aligned the fabric.
The cube came out, well, rather cube-like when I did it, but I'm not certain whether that's because I didn't draw the seam on before hand, relying on the sewing machine foot as a guide.
Has anyone thought about which way the bias should go when cutting panels? I'm inclined to think you should try and randomise it as much as possible, although I think the cube might benefit from actually trying to use the bias: I cut all my squares square, whereas I think that cutting them on the bias will yield rounder balls.
14th Feb 2007
another pattern
I just made a site with step by step instructions for another pattern. Check it out at http://juggleballs.amielmartin.com
22nd Dec 2006
juggling
My grandma just made me three out of different materials. they look so cool and almost everyone is asking me "Where did you get them?"
7th Dec 2005
UHG!
measure...uhg? is the picture there measured all rightly and stuff... like if i copied it and printed it would it be the right sizes?
9th Feb 2006
Re: UHG!
yes. the bags all come out to the appropriate 3-dimensional diamaters... the more careful you are in construction of the bag, the better the results, of course.
16th Jun 2005
on the patterns were it shows ...
on the patterns were it shows the size of the completed ball, does it refer to diameter, circomfrance? other?
23rd Nov 2005
Re: on the patterns were it shows ...
It is the diameter of the ball. This done by the sign Ø.
23rd Oct 2005
stitch the last bit with very ...
stitch the last bit with very long (strong or doubled) yarn BEFORE turning the ball inside out.
pull the yarn out again (with a nail, needle, toothpicker or so, or dont sew it tight in the first place) - pull it out less towards the corner, more towards the middle, so as the yarn makes big slopes that won't bother while turning the ball inside out.
turn it inside out now.
fill it.
now you can tighten the yarn cautiously.
make a knot of the remaining yarn then cut the remainders off less than about half diameter of the ball - NOT close to the knot.
you can now fiddle these remainders into a needle and push them into the ball into the last stitch beside the the last knot - WITH THE NEEDLE HEAD FIRST (pushing it with wooden block, the plastic part of your scissors, or sth. against the itchy end of the needle)
pull the yarn out again (with a nail, needle, toothpicker or so, or dont sew it tight in the first place) - pull it out less towards the corner, more towards the middle, so as the yarn makes big slopes that won't bother while turning the ball inside out.
turn it inside out now.
fill it.
now you can tighten the yarn cautiously.
make a knot of the remaining yarn then cut the remainders off less than about half diameter of the ball - NOT close to the knot.
you can now fiddle these remainders into a needle and push them into the ball into the last stitch beside the the last knot - WITH THE NEEDLE HEAD FIRST (pushing it with wooden block, the plastic part of your scissors, or sth. against the itchy end of the needle)