Bouncing along

Hi everyone!  How are you today?  We are barrelling towards Christmas and the start of 2017 (!!!), aren't we?  Have you finished shopping yet?  I had a good time on Amazon a couple of days ago, so I'm almost finished.  Yay me!

Of course, there are always a couple of things that just have to be made by hand.  Since this is my grandson's first Christmas, I made him these:

Pentagon patchwork balls!  Is there a little boy who wouldn't love throwing these around the house?  I used a tutorial from While She Naps, found HERE.  It's free, and there's even a free template for the pentagons. I used the pentagons at 100% for the smaller patchwork ball, and I printed them at 140% for the larger ball.  (150% wouldn't fit on the paper on my printer.)

I had a hard time with these little balls, but not because they're difficult.  Look what happened that really messed up my week:

Yikes!  We have a garage door with no garage door opener, and I was putting the door down when I pinched three of my fingers between the panels.  I said some very bad words and cried, too.  My finger isn't broken, but I dislocated it and the knuckle is still pretty swollen.  This made it impossible to put these little balls together using English paper piecing by hand, like they're supposed to be made.  Instead I used a really narrow zigzag and just butted the pieces up and stitched them together on the machine.  Never underestimate the determination of a grandma! It worked okay, but now I wish I had used red thread or something to give it a little zip.

One thing I learned with these is that it takes a *lot* of filling to make them really firm. I used a whole bag of fiberfill to stuff these two play balls, and I need to go get another bag because they're not really firm enough. You can see that they're just a little bit baggy.  I couldn't hand-stitch the last seam yet, but I really hope to have healed up enough to do that this coming week, so that's still open for me to add more fiberfill.  I also put a rattle in each of them:

For the record, the larger one makes a much more satisfying rattle.  I got these from While She Naps as well, and they work great.

Since I can't really cut anything right now, I also worked on these, which I had cut before I had the run-in with the door:

Purple 4-patches! Yeah, I might have to make Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt so that I can use all of these up.  I'm using the magenta for that project as well, but I haven't cut any of those pieces yet.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend.  I think we're going to go buy a garage door opener!  And then maybe I'll give the hubs some instructions on wrapping presents.  It should be amusing!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, crazymomquilts, Finished or Not Friday, and Oh Scrap!