Arrietty's Pin

The last thing I needed for my Arrietty costume was the pin she "borrows" from the kitchen.  While I saw an amazing tutorial on how to do this with a wooden dowel and a Styrofoam sphere, I didn't have any of those items on hand.  I did the only logical thing: try to make it out of fleece.

HA!  This turned out to be a mistake, but I'll still share the steps, because it turned out pretty cute, and it would be a great idea if you needed a prop for a child.

First, I cut out a rectangle of gray fleece and folded it in half.

Next, I stitched from the top to the bottom, going in at an angle.

I trimmed off the excess fabric and flipped it inside out.

Next, I added a taped hanger to try and give it a structural element to keep its shape.

Then I stuffed it with polyfill.

My dog loved the polyfill.

Naturally, I had to manipulate this photo....

Moving on.  With the metal part of the pin done, I moved onto the plastic yellow ball.  I cut out eight pointed ovals.

I sewed them all together using my sewing machine.  I left the last stitch an inch undone.

Turning it inside out, I then stuffed it with polyfill.

I hand stitched it onto the top of the pin.

And it wound up looking something like this:

Pretty cute, but totally impractical.  It had no structure, despite the hanger inside.  It was way too floppy.  

So, I bought a dowel and a Styrofoam ball and did as the tutorial instructed.  

I painted the dowel white.  Then painted it gray/silver.  I also added a Mod Podge top layer to seal it.

For the ball, I added a Mod Podge base, a few coats, to try and fill in the holes.  It didn't quite work.  I would have spent more time on it, but my deadline was quickly approaching.

I painted it white.  Then yellow.  Then added another top layer of Mod Podge.

And I wound up with this:

The original tutorial said to sand the edge into a pencil-like point.  I didn't have the tools for this, so I left it as is.  This made it just a tad too long.  But, it worked just fine!

And the whole thing together:

~Buttons