Gift Idea: Soft Balls for Baby

I am working on a tutorial for ya'll; I plan for it to be up later today.  But it has been too long since my last post, so I thought I would share some links for this gift idea.

Here is the first soft ball I made:

I made this by cutting 12 pentagon shapes with 2 inch sides.  You just choose one to use as the middle and sew 5 other pieces to that, one along each side.  Then repeat, and sew these two halves together, turn, and stuff.  I like to add a jingle bell, encased inside a small plastic container (like the capsules that hold vending machine toys, or a small plastic easter egg, taped closed).

After I made this "soccer ball" type soft toy, I found a different pattern at  Grand Revival.  This page includes patterns for making three different sized balls.  The first ones I made were from felt, which I do not recommend.  These balls will be played with a lot, and the felt gets pilly and kindof yucky.  You can see that in this picture of the balls I made last year:

So, now I make these balls from regular cotton fabrics, and they turn out much nicer.  Like I said, I like to add a jingle bell inside and also ribbon tags for grabbing:

Another thing I have done with these balls is add an applique.  This is a photo taken before I had a digital camera, and I hesitate to post it because it is so bad, but it might inspire you to add something cute to the balls you will make:

So that should give you some ideas for cute baby or toddler gifts.  I also found another cute way to make a soft ball that might be even better for a younger baby; this one has lots of places for a little baby to grab.  I haven't made one like this yet, so I don't have pictures to show you.  But there are pictures along with the tutorial for sewing this kind of soft ball at the Daily Skein.

Like I said, this is just a bonus post of sorts, while we wait on the next tutorial from me.  I hope it will be up in a few hours.  Until then, happy sewing!