Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Patchwork Ball

In South Australia, CYHWS organises a Mother's Group for people who have had their first child, usually with the babies being around the same age. For six weeks you go to a local outlet and talk about various things with a facilitator and the other Mums or caregivers. We covered settling, feeding, growth, creative play, discipline and so on. I learnt a fair bit, but the best aspect was meeting other first mum's. D and I don't have too many friends with children so it was great to make some new one's.

I wanted to make something for all of the babies as a gift for the last formal meeting we would have and eventually settled on a patchwork ball. My mum had the pattern in a 1960s pattern book, and rather than just use bought fabrics, I thought I'd do some gocco patches also. I settled on the kids name's, printing some patches with all of their names and other's with the individual baby's name. I also used some of Lara Cameron's fabric I bought at the Stitches and Craft Show.

I was very pleased with the end result, and by the end of the 10th one I was a pro!




I was going to make a pdf pattern of the ball, but I stumbled across a very similar pattern whilst on flickr here. The main difference is that I machine stitched mine and added a bell. If anyone wants tips on a machine stitched ball, let me know and I'll make the pattern up.

A big thank you to the women in my Mums'n'Bubs group, Nat, Sue, Natalie, Kerry, Kate, Sam, Deanna, Sarah and Rebecca! We're now meeting fortnightly here in the Rugby Building, and the other week at various cafe's/parks/pubs about the place.

7 comments:

Casey said...

such a nice idea! they turned out great

Cass said...

What a lovely gift

Anthea Bartlett said...

Thank you! They were fun to make!

Anna said...

Wow, these are beautiful. Such a lovely idea for your mothers group. They have the same thing in QLD but the one I went along to most of the other mother's lived a fair distance from me and I didn't really make any real connections, which was disappointing because like you we don't have a lot of friends in Brissie with kids... I'm hanging on for a couple more months though and then we'll try again with a local play group.

Mollie said...

Oh. My. These are just plain wonderful. The Gocco customization is fantastic. And thank you for the hand sewn version link...just my style!

Anthea Bartlett said...

Anna, I hope the local play group works for you! Since having Ruby I have been trying to 'get myself out there', and anything like that is great. Next up for us - swimming classes!

Becky said...

I love the Gocco prints. And I love the idea of the bell inside as well :)