Spiral crochet soccerball

After lots of delays, and more than a month after the end of the World Cup the ball is finished at last!



Although I like the finished ball I think the process was a lot more satisfying than the end result. I loved the process of designing the pattern and figuring out the spirals. I also loved making the individual hexagons/pentagons. I like the colours and I am happy that I added the solid colours to the variegated ones. But somehow the finished ball is not as spectacular as I imagined it would be...



I had to make a lining as the crochet was to 'holey' to keep the stuffing in. I chose black as I just wanted it to disappear in the background and not make a colour statement. Now I think it makes the ball dull. Maybe I should have picked one of the main colours - yellow? blue? I don't know...



Initially I had in mind a whole series of balls made with different techniques of needlecraft. But now that the football fever has died down it sort of lost it's appeal. I still feel there should be at least three balls and I really want to make an embroidered one, but I am not sure about the design yet. And I have a whole list of other things I want to get to...

So the jury is still out on the third one. The inspiration might come while I am working on my next project...

Soccerball Progress (not!) 3

Remember last time I said things like "only 15 to go" and "finish before the start of the World Cup"? Well, it ain't gonna happen...
I went to the yarn shop last week to buy one more ball of each colour and... they ran out of the variegated colours! And apparently they don't plan to order more any time soon, so I had to improvise.



I bought one of each of the main colours from every variegated yarn and went home to redesign my pattern.



After some deliberation I changed a few of the swirls from variegated to solid colours. I had to do it in such a way that the colours are evenly spread around the ball. It meant I had to undo some (most) of the finished hexagons to change one colour to a solid. It also meant that each hexagon now has to be individually labelled because every one has a very specific place in the bigger scheme of things.



So, the Good News is: It will look better this way - more depth in the colours
but the Bad News is: It won't be finished before kick-off on Friday...

Soccer Ball Progress 2

It is going a bit slower than I want it to, but at least there is some progress...



Only 17 days to go before the World Cup starts! I hope to be finished by then...



17 blocks down, 15 to go.

Soccer Ball Progress

I have finished 6 pieces of the soccer ball. 5 hexagons and 1 pentagon. After assembling the blocks into the first cluster it looks like this:


Positioned on the ball, it looks like this:

(6 down, 26 to go!)

As you can see the colours follow through from the adjacent blocks. By the time the ball is completed the swirls will wrap right around the ball. I can't wait to see that..


Just incase it looks very confusing to you, I thought I'll show it to you step by step: This is the pentagon in the centre of the cluster.


Round 1: (very fiddly and frustrating!) I started with 5ch closed into a loop. Each colour starts with 2ch,1sc after which I save it on a paperclip and start with the next colour. keeping all the strings apart at this stage is quite tricky...


Round 2: 1dc into 2ch, 1dc into sc...onto the paperclip and do the same with the next colour...


Round 3: 1dc-1ch-1dc into dc, 1dc into dc...onto the paperclip and do the same with the next colour...


Round 4: 1dc into dc, 1dc-1ch-1dc into ch, 1dc into dc, 1dc into dc...onto blah,blah,blah...


Round 5: 1sc into dc, 1sc into dc, 1slipstich into ch, cast off. Work away the loose ends in the middle, it opens the centre up nicely.

For a hexagon start with 6 different strings and follow the same instructions.
I tapered off and stopped after 5 rounds as that is the size I need for the ball, but if you want to make something else, just carry on with what you were doing in round 4 until you have the desired size and then taper it off.
I would also suggest that you start with 5 (or 6 in the case of the hexagon) different colours. Working with the same colours makes this even more confusing in the beginning.

Now on to the next cluster...

Crochet confusion

The crochet soccer ball was coming along fine, or so I thought, until after 5 hexagons, the pattern wouldn't flow anymore. I was stuck. I changed the order of the colours a few times but I still got stuck at the same place.
So I decided to work it all out on paper first. A classic case of "when all else fails, read the instructions"! In this case it is more like "if all else fails, invent some instructions"

I made a few hexagons and pentagons on CAD, covered the soccer ball in it and started colouring. After a few tries I got the pattern to follow through all around the ball. The secret is that not all the hexagons are the same. In some of them the order of the colours are different. The pentagons also confused me for a while. The 3 colours are evenly spread over the hexagons, because of the 6 sides, but with the pentagons I ran into trouble. Only when I accepted that pentagon will have more of some colours than others, did the pattern work out

Now it is back to crocheting!

New Soccer Ball Ideas

I just started on my next soccer ball design, and look what I have so far...

Some really nice cotton from Mission Falls (Canada). I was looking for some variegated yarn and these are just what I had in mind - I loovvee the colours!

The first hexagon. The size is not perfect yet and I still have to work out how all the swirly bits are going to connect, but I love the look of it.

Looks promising, doesn't it?

Soccer Ball Update

My first soccer ball is finished at last!



Patched and quilted (or rather top-stitched - there's no batting underneath) and stuffed with foam pillow-filling, I am quite happy with how it turned out.



I used the colours of the South African flag as my inspiration for this ball. The fabric is called Shwe-shwe and is traditional to South Africa. Read more about it here.



The next ball will hopefully not take so long to make and will be something completely different - watch this space...

Soccer ball progress

I chose the fabric for my first ball a few weeks ago but I only got around to do something with it this morning. I chose the colours of the South African flag for the quilted ball and I found some great South African fabric at our new craftshop (more about that later).



Before I could cut it I had to figure out the placement of each colour to avoid having two of the same next to each other. It took a bit of trial and error to get that right. Firstly I printed the 2D configuration of the ball and started marking the colours on there, but that turned out to be very confusing as I couldn't keep track of which end fitted where. After a few mistrials I gave up!



In the end I went out and bought a soccerball so I could mark the colours directly on the ball. This worked much better and I now know where each block has to go.



Of course my sons think this is a complete waste of a perfectly good soccerball, but they'll just have to wait untill I finished ALL the balls I am planning before they can get their hands (and feet) on my soccerball...

A soccer ball is not round.

Really.

A soccer ball (or football if you're from Europe) is a spherical polyhedron or spherical truncated icosahedron. It is a shape made up of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. It has 32 flat sides, but because of the elasticity of the material, the air pressure inside pushes the flat sides outwards so that it appears round.



So why would I be interested in the shape of a football?

Everybody who follow football will know that the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be held in South Africa in June and that football fever has gripped the country. As expats we often feel left out of national celebrations like this, and therefore I decided to do something to make me (us) feel part of the hype.



Because craft is my thing I am planning to make soccer balls in all the different mediums that I love to work with. So far I have a quilted, crocheted and embroidered ball planned...



Before I can start with the actual balls I had to make a test ball to try out different methods of doing the seams and to make sure I have the size right. (The straight edges of the hexagons and pentagons has to be 4.5cm to make a size 3 ball.)



I first tried to sew the sides together with the sewing machine, but the corners were a mess, so I ended up sewing them together by hand. It looks much better.

I used a contrasting colour thread for the test run, but for the real thing I will use something less obvious. The fabric for the first ball is ready for cutting, so watch this space...