Puzzle Ball, Part 1

Oh, hi. Not posting for 11 days is just terrible, and only the first four days can be excused by the fact that my house had no power and I was walking around in the dark, wearing gloves and seeing my breath. The other seven days are just, well, lost momentum.

If you're friends with me on Facebook (and I'm pretty sure that's my entire readership), you may remember seeing photos of a puzzle ball I made a while back.

I found the pattern in Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, a fabulous book from the library. Apparently they are Amish in origin, and are good developmental toys for babies. Um, I made one for myself. Because they're pretty. And, being made out of half circles and ellipses, the math that's hiding in there fascinates me.

When a friend of mine saw it, he immediately started flipping the segments around, like it was a rubix cube (nothing is attached in the middle). This had never occurred to me - it would be amazing to put something with four rotating bits at the points where the blue embroidery floss is, and you could turn it all around and make it look many different ways. If you were so inclined. Which I am. But thinking about how that would work makes my head spin a little, so I'm going to go with the more doable idea, which is: there should totally be a bell inside it.

For the babies, I mean. For the babies.

A close family friend's niece had a beautiful baby boy in mid August, and I think it's about high time that baby had a handmade gift from me. So, fortified with these:

I don't know what nibs are, but I know I like them. Nom.

I used a very sophisticated template to make 3 orange and 6 purple circles.

I cut the purple circles in half, and made ellipses out of the orange. I marked a "scant" 1/4 of an inch seam allowance:

Then I used the sewing machine to do the first seam for each of the 12 segments.

It takes a while to hand sew the remaining seams on all twelve segments, so that's all you get for now. Part 2 coming up in a few days!