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| Solving this may keep you occupied for a while... |
Sometimes, however, your brain just isn't prepared to do the amount of work required by a task — or, the amount of fabric scraps you're working with aren't sufficient to fulfill the goal — so you put it off until the next time.
A couple of weeks later, I was armed and ready with my supply of Remix Metallic, of which I still had four selections.
First, I had to figure out a way to allocate the four fabrics so that none of them repeated on any given plane. My first instinct was to use different coloured pins to keep track, but then tossed that idea when it occurred to me that I might have to take apart the puzzle and didn't want to get stabbed.
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| Planning for a ball in which each intersection shows the same fabric... |
In the end, white electrical tape came to my rescue and I didn't really have to disassemble it either.
Then I transferred all of the data into an Excel worksheet.
The information that follows will guide you in making a more challenging puzzle ball. I've specified the fabrics required for the top and bottom of each of the three rings that you'll end up making. (Recall that four completed wedge "pillows" are joined together to make a ring.)
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This is one side of the first ring... starting at the lower left corner and going counter-clockwise, the fabric order is 3, 4, 2, 1 |
For example, the photo above shows the completed first ring, where the wedges are joined together with fabrics showing as 3, 4, 2 and 1.
This order can be found in the worksheet below, on the row marked "First Ring Bottom Layer". (If you're a numbers kind of person, take a closer look and you'll see that each ring actually has the same ordering on the top and the bottom; the sequence is just offset by two.)
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| My Excel fabric planning worksheet... |
For this puzzle ball, you'll need to cut one and a half circles — recall that my original template was provided as a circle — of each of four different fabrics, yielding six wedge shaped pieces each.
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| Fabric requirements... |
Then you'll need a fifth coordinating fabric for the twelve petal shaped pieces, which are the outside edges of the rings. Refer back to my original post here for the full instructions and template download.
but for readers who pay attention, it's also available at no charge by clicking right here.
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| Coloured pins help keep track of what "ring" each piece will ultimately be on... |
To keep track of which pieces belong to which ring, use different colour pins and keep them attached all the way through. In my case, I used purple pins to track the pieces for the first ring, orange pins for the second ring and yellow pins for the third.
Note that each fabric appears only once on each side of the three completed rings. As you sort out and pin your fabric pieces, check this before you start sewing.
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| The perfect storage solution... |
Remember my triple zip box pouch? It was the perfect portable container for me to keep my pieces separated as I sewed, stuffed, and then hand sewed them up — sometimes out in the back yard. Beyond using colour coded pins, you may want to have some way of keeping your fabric pieces and completed wedges separated as you go.
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| Three rings connected and ready to link... |
So after you have the three rings completed, what then? How do you solve it, you ask?
Maybe you want to try on your own first, before reading any further?
Take two rings and insert one into the other to form an "X" shape...
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| This is the "X" shape you want to form... |
... while making sure that each pair of adjacent wedges matches.
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| Adjacent wedges must match... |
Then position the correct matching wedge from the remaining ring and wrap it around the "X".
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| This actually turned out to be the wrong blue wedge... |
I said "correct" because at this point, there are two possibilities for a match, but only one yields the desired result where all of the triangular intersections have the same fabric.
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| Solved! |
If you're afraid that it'll be difficult, let me reassure you that it's not.
I'll admit that the first time I tried to put it together, I thought, am I going to be able to get photos of this thing in its "solved" state? But it turns out that figuring out how to make this — and then actually making it — takes more effort than actually solving it. And once you do it a couple of times, it's easy.
Take it from a person who could only consistently match up one side of a Rubik's cube. ;-)
Good luck and have fun!
'Til next...
YEEKS!!WHAT A COOL CHALLENGE. BUT I'M LIKE YOU..CAN ONLY GET ONE SIDE THE SAME COLOR !!🤯🤪🤣
ReplyDeleteYes... when I (accidentally?) matched up two sides one time, I left the cube as is. It's still sitting on top of an old desk in that state!
DeleteThis ball is much easier.