So, I had gone to a craft fair held at a local Waldorf school and I saw someone selling a toy I remember from my own childhood - a fabric baby grab ball. I thought to myself, "I can do that!" - and promised myself to make one of these for my youngest as a Christmas gift.
A bit of searching on the internet led me to this pattern. As you can see from my photo, I chose not to use felt for this project, so when sewing it, I did standard stitching with a tight 1/4" seam allowance and then turned it inside out and stuffed. I also opted to make it into a puzzle ball - so that my older children would find it interesting (and I seem to recall the ball from my childhood being a puzzle ball).
I particularly enjoy that I chose a quilt-weight cotton for the outside pieces of the ball and corduroy for the inside pieces. The different textures of fabric give it just a nice feel on the hands.
It isn't easy for me to sew without everyone in the house knowing what I'm working on. Given that this gift was for my littlest, I didn't figure it would matter. It turned out that prior to getting the ball as a gift for Christmas, my littlest gave it a dry-run and absolutely loved it. I loved that it was a hit. And if I'm looking for a reasonably easy homemade gift to give at a 1st birthday, I think I'll pull this pattern out and use it again.
