Collection in my dryer

The 2 green ones and 2 pinks ones are my successes. The other one was a pain in my hand! I tried to use a carpet needle and sew wool yarn around a tennis ball. Ha! What a joke!

I found this tutorial on Good Mama. It was a start, but I didn’t like how the center was yarn. I have tons of scrap fabric and since I am on my big kick about using up everything, I figured I would use it for the center.

So, I wadded up a handful of scrap fabric and then wrapped 100% wool yarn from the Michael’s clearance section around it until I got the size I wanted. Washed in hot, dryed in the dryer. I gave my felting needles a whirl to decorate my balls. That was fun!

The pink ones were another adventure as I wanted a way to incorporate essential oil into my ball. Putting the oil on the outside put some oiliness to my clothes and that is no good. I asked my doctor for an ear-lookey-insidey-thingy and she kindly obliged. I wrapped the wool around it and then felted it with it in tact.

The center ball has a slit in the center. The hole isn’t huge, but it is big enough to put the ear-funnel thing in to put in more essential oil or other smell good into the ball.

These turned out fantastic! I absolutely love that I used up all my fabric stuff, including the bits left over on the serger. One ball of yarn made 4 of these.

Items you will need:

wide elastic (You don’t want it too thin as it might really cut into those precious little baby legs. I used 5/8″ braided and it works.)
toe socks (These have no heel section, they are a straight tube)
sewing skills (You could hand sew these, that is why I put skills and not machine. Heck, even if you don’t have skills, you could hack at this and still get it right!)
scissors (Again, not actually something you need. If you are hungry, don’t value your teeth, and don’t have them, feel free to gnaw at ‘em)
pins
willingness to make it through one pair

Cut off the toes. Notice the sad little piggy.

Seal the ends with a serger or zig zag stitch. Pictured here, I am serging, but found the zig zag to produce a better finished edge due to the stretch.
Measure around the fattest part of your baby’s thigh (for us it was 8-1/2 inches). Cut a length of elastic measuring 1 inch more than your measurement. Sew that length into a loop, overlapping each end 1/2 inch. Lay this over the end you previously sealed, fold over the elastic toward the inside of the sock, and pin. The fold should extend past the edge of the elastic by at leat 3/8″. Using a stretch stitch (zig zag, triple zig zag, long length straight stitch), sew the folded edge down ensuring you don’t catch the elastic. You might have to stretch the sock or elastic a bit to make it fit properly. If it gets wonky, don’t worry as the sweater-esque fabric will hide it. The picture shows the pinned in elastic ready to be sewn on the machine.
Repeat process for other sock.

These can be worn with the original band or the newly created band on the thigh. It offers a bit change. Here is another pair I made but held off on the elastic. They need elastic if that end is going on the thigh, but these are the same pattern either way you put them on.

These little dollhouses are so danged cute! After a couple of weeks of dolls and dogs made from thread and pipe cleaners, they all needed a home.
The next one I make, I am going to not use plastic canvas and see if some stiff insert like TimTex will do the trick and make is so I can just bias bind the edges.

Wish me luck as they make their final selections!

I am the web designer for the site and used an open source project out of MIT called Exhibit from the SIMILE project. So cool! So very cool!

Please check it out!