To encourage a bit of crafting I signed myself up for:
I thought my husband would be proud if I sewed together a football (otherwise known as soccer elsewhere in the world) in Manchester United colours. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that everyone else on the blog hop was talking about American football... That wasn't in the plan. Thankfully the powers that be were happy to be flexible and suggested I craft something for Aussie Rules Football.
Football Rattle
I'm not much of a designer. As you'll see, my finished product differs from those in the photos as I sewed together a prototype first. Hey, live and learn, right? It's also a fairly simple tutorial for reasons you will see later on in the blog post.
You'll need to draw and cut out a long, elongated leaf shape:
I sketched mine on a folded piece of card and then cut it out:
You could use this template to cut directly from your fabric or greaseproof paper but I added an extra step. I prefer to do it this way as I find that greaseproof paper buckles a bit if I pin it to my fabric which can leave uneven edges. Also, I can never find a fabric marker when I need one to draw around a template so my preferred method is to cut all the pieces out of freezer paper:
and then iron the pieces (shiny side down) onto my material:
You can then cut out around the template:
and peel the paper off:
It's now as easy as pinning the pieces of fabric, right sides together (I was careful to avoid any particular colours in case I was inadvertently supporting a particular Football team...):
and stitching them in place:
Instead of 'proper' laces, I cut some ribbons, about an inch long:
and then pinned and sewed them in the middle of one of the sides:
When sewing the last seam, leave a few inches to turn the ball out the right way and to stuff it.
If you pop the top off a tic tac box, you can cut quite easily into the plastic. Fill it with rice, put the top back in and you've got yourself a rattle insert:
When you have stuffed the ball sufficiently and inserted the rattle element, pin and hand sew it closed.
I did have grand plans to embroider the kangaroo symbol and some lettering on one of the felt sides but, well, even pinning the pieces together was a struggle with this little fella:
He doesn't seem overly fussed with his rattle at the moment, but hopefully he'll change his mind soon!
