The evolution of the ball

I've wanted to make a soft ball that can be tossed around the house, and not do too much damage.
I found several patterns on line, and started my quest to make the perfect house friendly ball.

8 SIDED BALL WITH EYE

Although the 8 pieces were all the same size, and sewed as accurately as possible, they would not meet at the top, and I had to put the black eye on top to cover the error.
Although it does look good, it wasn't what I had in mind, so I had to move on to the next ball pattern.

6 SIDED ORANGE BALL

I found this pattern, and decided to test it out using the felt colour I had the most of.  Orange won!
I love the way all six sides meet at the top, nice and neat, but I am not happy with the itsy-bitsy uneven stitches.  My friend told me I'd go blind if I continued stitching that small, and I snapped out of it, and moved onto the next ball.  I plan to turn them into pumpkins and Jack o lanterns for Halloween.

6 SIDED RAINBOW BALL

 I changed the colour of thread with each seam, and tried to increase the stitch size (I found that difficult to do)

I am finally happy with my daddy, mummy and baby balls.

I reduced the mummy ball to 70%, and baby is 30% of the original pattern size (daddy).

I snapped and sent a photo of this trio to my Mother-in-law, and she sent it to a friend, and that friend placed an order for a set of balls for a baby gift.
How exciting!

After taking these photos, I decided that the balls looked nice in this white bowl, so I set them out under the umbrella in the back garden.

There was a terrible wind storm, and the next morning I had to go hunting for them.  It took a long time, and sadly I lost 3 of them  :(

They have not been seen since.

Always bring your balls in at night.