Major League Baseball is over for yet another season (go Tigers!). But who says it has to end for everyone else? We have a baseball fan in our family. Actually, fan is an understatement. This person is wholly engrossed in obsessed with baseball. So this is a wee giftie for that person.
I got the idea from My Ruby Girl and modified it a bit so it would be a bit bigger.
First you need yourself a baseball, one made out of genuine leather. This one is from an Ottawa Little League. Not sure how we ended up with it, but nonetheless …
Then you take a sturdy craft knife or box cutter and you cut around the seams, leaving a centimetre or two of space. You don’t want to cut too closely because you might cut the threads binding the whole thing together.
Then you can peel off those little centre bits away from the seam.
And then you can peel off the seam, all in one piece.
You can easily pull off all that sticky string.
Now you want to find the spot where the seam ends and the stitches are loose. Pull a few of those stitches out so you have space to cut the leather. You don’t want to cut the string.
Now you want to trim off that excess leather, cutting closer to the seam. Not too close, of course, but close enough that it looks nice and tidy. It’s up to you. Then you’re going to fold your long strip in half and cut it again.
Now you have two bracelets. If you want, you can stop right here, tack on some string or hardware at the ends for fastening and be done with it.
But we’re going to take it a little further.
What if we take both strips and sew them together? Makes the bracelet a bit bigger, right? I have some lovely hemp string here in a nice shade of Toronto Blue Jays blue, for their biggest fan.
I popped open my Altoids tin containing my special needles.
And got to work with one of the curved ones. It was a little bit of a challenge to force the string through the small holes, and because of the curve, not all the holes lined up properly but that didn’t really concern me.
When I had finished, I used the existing holes to sew on some vintage plastic buttons.
I made sure to tie the knots carefully underneath, and I rubbed a little beeswax over the knots to keep them in place.
Put a little wax on the buttons, too.
Then I doubled up the thread to make two loops around which to hook the buttons and fasten the bracelet.
I used beeswax here too, to strengthen the hemp string.
And then the loops naturally twisted around themselves.
The finished product.
I put a little almond oil into the leather, too, to soften it. It’s a nice little cuff.
