Hey everybody!
Rob from Man Sewing here today.
And we’re going to have a very playful tutorial for you.
That’s right I want to give you some of the basics of making these stuffed ball shapes,
right?
So today we’re going to focus on the pentagon.
There’s a lot of different ways of making that.
But I’m going to walk you through using a pentagon, a five-sided shape.
And we’re going to need 12 of these.
So let me start kind of walking you through the supplies because I’m obviously very
excited to do this.
Right?
The first thing we’re going to need to do is make ourselves some sort of a template.
And our template we have is a download for you here at Man Sewing.
It has a five inch pentagon.
So that will fit your five inch squares that come from your charm packs.
This is from Riley Blake.
It is called Play Ball.
You can’t go wrong with that.
And you only need 12 of the fabrics but it’s really cool because it’s got different prints
and different colors inside of the charm pack so it makes it a little more creative, a little
more variety in there.
Oh and then also on the template we have a real basic layout.
Like I said, you need 12 of these.
You see six here.
We’re going to make two of these things that I call the flower cup, right?
Oh and as you’re working through this if you want to resize your pentagon, it’s very
easy.
If you wanted it larger, you would just take your ruler, lay it right on one of those straight
lines.
And then you’re just going to extend that line out like this.
And you would work your way all the way around.
So I’m adding an inch which will make a much larger ball by the way.
Or if you wanted to make it smaller, you could come to the other side of your ruler and let’s
say I’m taking off a half of an inch in here.
So there’s a lot of ways that you can resize the templates we’ve provided for you.
Experiment a little bit.
It’s a lot fun.
But ya, just work your way all the way around and that will resize the template you’re
about to prepare.
And for making your template, I strongly recommend something like the millar plastic so you can
kind of see through it when you’re working.
But you could also use cardboard.
You could technically kind of free cut this on top of the paper.
But you can see that the template I used originally was just a little bit smaller.
I wanted to maximize this for you so you can get the most use out of your fabric.
Once you have that shape made, your pentagon template is already created, right?
Then you’re just going to take a stack, and I want to say, we need 12.
So I’m going to say between three and four fabrics.
You don’t want to cut probably anymore than that.
And two different ways to do this.
You could technically just really slowly get in here and cut along that line.
But you could also accidentally cut through your template if you’re not careful.
If that makes you uncomfortable, the other way to do that would be to use your template
as a marking place but then just drop your ruler right on top, right?
And that’s going to keep my hand safe.
And then the ruler keeps the template safe.
So either way, I’m going to go around and cut 12 of those pentagon shapes and then prepare
to lay them out, right?
Let’s get these out of our way.
And when I lay them out, I’m going to lay them out and start to think about my organization.
I really don’t want the exact same colors touching as I go around.
So I wouldn’t necessarily use that one there.
I might skip over to this side.
So something like this would be a fun layout.
And you can kind of start to see that flower of the flower cup starting to form.
And we’re going to stitch these with a quarter inch seam allowance.
And we’re going to sew just one edge, the bottom of each pentagon, to the center part.
So I’m going to bounce over here, run my quarter inch seam allowance real quick.
We’re going to kind of be sewing over the corners so backstitching is not all that necessary.
And I’d grab the next one, and I’m going to peel back that corner a little ways.
Let me show you what I’m trying to say.
I’m going to peel back that corner, right in there, so that that way I’m locking in
the first two pieces of fabric.
Oop, needle up.
There we go.
I love needle down and sometimes I forget to disengage.
Starting on that edge and I’m going to come around.
Ok, that’s real easy.
And when it’s all done, you’re going to have basically this here.
Slide that out of the way.
So that is the center with all five extra pentagons stitched to it.
The next step is we’re going to individually sew the different sides together.
Just do those one at a time still pinching our fabrics together.
Right sides, right?
Just like yay.
Now I’m going to come back and do that same trick at the corner.
I really want to lock that seam in nice.
Ok, here we go again.
And I’m going to do this to all five of the sides until it starts to kind of form
a cup shape.
And that’s why I’m calling these a flower cup.
So I’ll show you one more here.
Just pinching that, starting back in the corner.
Here we go.
Sewing along.
So again, just sewing those edges and eventually I will capture all of those.
And when those are all done, it makes a terrific piece of headwear, right?
Or you have two of these fantastic flower cups.
So the next step you’re going to want to do is prepare to join these together.
So let’s go ahead now and turn them now back to inside out.
And inside out.
And the key to this, this is great.
The first time I did this, so this is not what I want you to do.
The first time I did it, I joined point to point.
And it makes one of the ugliest looking starfish you’ve ever seen.
This big fat little fluffy starfish.
Not even worth talking about really.
So what I really want you to do, first of all choose fabric that is again different
colors if you can.
And we’re going to join our points or our hips into our valley there.
And I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to grab this.
And I am going to have to sew this like I would a pillow.
I’m going to sew almost all the way around.
And once I start, I’m going to continue this seam.
I’m not going to do one at a time.
I’m doing all the way around or almost all the way around so that I can turn it back
to right sides out and stuff it will be our next step.
So here we go but I’m going to sew all of this for us.
You can backstitch a little bit at the corner so you can lift the presser foot and then
pinch the next seam allowance together.
Drop your presser foot back down so you have made that corner nice and secure.
Ok, now I’m going to rip through the rest of these for us.
Ok, as I’m getting ready to come into that last corner now, I’m going to go ahead and
make just a few stitches past the very last corner so that when I’m all done and I turn
those right sides out, I can just go ahead and hand stitch this closed.
So we’re going to go ahead and take a couple stitches and I want to backstitch to lock
it.
Needle up.
Come around the corner.
And so I just have that very small little opening and I’m going to go ahead and start
to poke.
And when I’m doing that I kind of poke with my fingers.
I don’t want to pull real hard on it, ok?
And now we’ve got the ball shape, ready to rock and roll.
And we just need some stuffing.
Some stuffing might be an understatement.
You would not believe how much stuffing or this poly fill it requires to fill these stuffed
objects.
Now you can see, in my opinion, this could have used a little bit more.
So I’m just going to start packing it in.
And here’s one of the tricks.
If you’ve never stuffed anything, it comes pretty dense right?
It’s pretty solid.
So I learned this a long time ago, you want to break it up or it’s going to kind of
feel lumpy or it could even look a little lumpy.
So we want to break it up as much as possible, right?
And then we’re going to kind of just lob that back in.
I’ve kind of found I have my hands on the bag so I’m holding that opening and I’m
using my thumb to push the stuffing in.
Ok?
Open it up.
And I bet you it will take about a quarter to a third of this bag, if I want it really
firm.
And if you wanted to put something fun like a bell in there that would ring.
Like maybe you wanted to turn it into a toy for a pet or a little child or something that
bell would be interesting.
You would want to put that in while you’re doing the stuffing process.
I probably get it about half full and then just drop it in.
And I won’t spend a heck of a lot of time showing you how to finish this.
But like I said, once it’s done, I’m just going to pull this closed.
You might even want to press a little bit.
You’ll get your hand needle all threaded up.
And we can just whip this stitch, whipstitch this closed by hand of course, no problem
there at all.
But I want to take a couple moments to show you something else.
I thought this was really cool.
So while I was thinking of this project right?
I was hanging out with my friends over at the MSQC and they have all these cool templates.
And I thought, ooooh, an orange peel template.
I bet you I could use their quilting template to make another ball.
So it worked really great and actually I have to say, I almost like this one better but
I promised the pentagon ball so we did it, right?
But look how smooth that one turns out.
So if you’re doing the orange peel style, you’re only going to need six.
If you’re doing the pentagon style, you need 12 of your shapes.
But think about how awesome that would look in all of your favorite fabric.
So I tell you what, when you’re sending all your awesome feedback in and telling us
how much you love the videos, send the pictures of all the different kinds of shapes you’re
using and different kinds of fabrics you’re using to create your awesome three-dimensional
stuffed balls.
And until next time, we’ll see you here at Man Sewing.