Nov. 17, 2024, 11:37am

Joshua,

Thanks for putting in all the work on this site. It's been a ton of fun playing around with your patterns.

Back in the mid 80's Hacky Sack was a big thing. Two panels made of cowhide filled with plastic pellets. I was in middle school at the time and had a paper route in the business district of my hometown. The last stop on the route was a Greek shoe repair store. The gentleman who owned the store saw my "hacky sack" and suggested I make my own. We cut open my store bought footbag and traced the pattern out. We used super soft deerskin leather and after some repetition the footbags I made were stellar.

Fast forward to today....

Last winter I started sewing footbags again. I used the internet for patterns and came across this one and a few others. I ordered up a bunch of deerskin and sheepskin leather...needles...thread...super glue. After making pretty much every ball 32 panels and less the one that I think is the best quality is the 14 panel... with 6 squares and 8 hexes. I'm very interested in the "custom" 14 panel designs you have rough drafted. If I make something along those lines I'll keep you posted.

I sent a picture to your email address of some of the footbags I've made. I super appreciate all the time and effort you've put into this site.

Respectfully,

Lee


Lee's homemade footbag collection photo added by Joshua Clifton: https://www.joshuaclifton.com/juggle/forumpics/my_site/20241117_110802.jpg

Nov. 18, 2024, 4:38pm

Thank you so much, Lee! I appreciate you telling me about your hobby and how my work advanced it! That's an amazing collection of footbags! I added a link to your photo to your post so others can see your beautiful work. I really appreciate you sharing that with me!

If you use my 2-piece "baseball" pattern, let me know how good a sphere it produces for you. It becomes slightly egg-shaped for me. I would like to improve my pattern, but I don't know how yet. How well are the other patterns and instructions working out for you? You've probably made more use of my documents than anyone else, so please let me know if you have any advice for improvements to either the patterns or the instructions & illustrations.

Thanks again, and I'd love to see your future work!

Nov. 19, 2024, 3:22pm

Hi Joshua,

I did make one of the two panel bags with your pattern. It came out okay but I agree it was a tad "egg shaped." I did a little investigating and came upon this...  https://math.arizona.edu/~rbt/baseball.PDF

On page 14 there is a half a pattern that I scaled to match the 2.5 inch pattern of yours. There is a difference and the footbags produced are rounder. The math behind this pattern hurts my brain.

I did send you a few pics to your email addy.

Respectfully,

Lee

Nov. 19, 2024, 7:44pm

I actually found that same article years ago! The math makes my brain hurt, too, LOL! If I can ever figure it out and find a graphing software tool to draw a pattern like that, I'll add it to my patterns. I tried Thompson's pattern the same way you did, by duplicating the half-pattern he provided and printing it. It made a better ball for me, too. I just can't figure out how to draw that pattern myself, and I don't want to merely duplicate his JPEG illustration into my patterns.

Thanks for the photos you sent!