The Juggling Equipment Blog

JugglingEquipment.com is holding competitions once in a while and our current competition is a Juggling Picture Competition. The rules are simple – send us a picture that has a juggling theme, we will post all the pictures we receive and you will all vote for the winning picture. Read all about it! Read the rest of this entry →

So…Yes….Ahmm Yes, this is how a juggling video should look like in my humble opinion.

Juggling in the movie is Lorenzo Cricellari a.k.a Sid. Some of you might have seen him already in his great movie Stepz, or in another italian co-production: Imperfect Cirqual.

The juggling is great, music by Wax Tailor, great shots and a wonderful editing job.

The last few months of spring have brought with them a renewal here at JugglingEquipment.com. We have been able to establish many new relationships with Juggling equipment manufacturer around the globe like Taibolo – the fantastic diabolo manufacturer from Taiwan and QU-AX – Unicycle manufacturer from Germany.

But as you might already know, We here at JugglingEquipment.com are not only selling other peoples products but we manufacture a lot of the equipment we sell. One of the main products we specialize in are bean bags.

For the past two years we have been hard at work trying to perfect our ball making techniques and the material we are working with. So here is our little guide to making juggling balls.

Fabric

The first thing we notice seeing a new juggling ball is always the fabric. After that we will feel the touch of the fabric in our hands, a little squeeze will reveal whether the fabric has some stretch (like the Mr. Babache standard balls) or no stretch at all (Like our BergaBalls). Every jugglers has his own preferences about his juggling balls, some like them round and firm and some like them underfilled and soft.

Among professional jugglers however a consensus was developed over the years that the ultimate ball’s fabric should have little stretch to it, this will allow the ball to fall softer into your hands. Over the years we have made hundreds of different juggling balls from dozens of different fabrics, always searching for that one perfect fabric. In my living room you can sometimes see my little one year old son playing with a lot of balls, each has its own size and fabric – all the different balls we have tried over the years.

We have found some fabric during our searches which we feel make better balls the the rest. Most of those fabrics are used for making upholstery – they are strong and gentle to the touch like we would expect from a couch. MicroFiber fabrics and UltraLeather are are two favorites – the MicroFiber for our extremely durable FiberBall series and the UltraLeather for our professional OrkaBall series.

Pattern

In order to make 3 dimensional juggling balls out of 2 dimensional fabric there is a need to cut the fabric and then stitch it in the right pattern. Most of the juggling balls out there are made of 4 panels of fabric. The reason behind it is that 4 panels can create a reasonably round ball and require only 3 stitching moves on the machine (you put 2 and 2 together and then stitch the 2 half together in one move). doubling the number of panels to 8 will guarantee you a very nice round juggling ball out of almost any fabric you use. You will however find yourself working longer to get one ball ready. We at JugglingEquipment.com manufacture balls that have 4, 6, 8 and 12 panels.

So what is the best pattern? it would depend of the fabric you use – the less stretchy it is the more panels you may want to have, more panels can help you create a better looking ball. there is however a pattern that is favored by most of the leading professional jugglers around the globe – the cube (6 panel) pattern. The reason for that is that the number of panels meeting at every “corner” are just 3, enabling you to create a softer connection between panels that you feel less in you hands. It is however a lot harder to make that kind off ball and that is why there are only a few manufacturers (including us of course) who make them.

There are a few pattern booklets for juggling balls out there, the best by far was created by Marylis Ramos. Here is a link to a sewing juggling balls article she wrote on IJDB a few years ago, and it has a link in the bottom to download the 2 parts of the booklet.

Don’t expect to get perfect juggling balls immediately – depending on the fabric you might have to make small changes to the pattern. we found out that sometimes even a millimeter makes a huge difference in how the ball turns out.

Filling

There are (as always) a few options for filling juggling balls but the consensus is that the best filling is millet. Some people prefer to put small plastic balls into the bean bag so that they can wash the ball. The only problem with the millet is that it soaks water and a ball fallen into water will become bigger and will not shrink back to it’s original size.

Sewing

Sewing is a 2 part job – you start it on the machine (or by hand if you have no machine) and that close the ball by hand after turning it and filling it. The thread you should use should be strong – guterman thread is a good choice, we use an even stronger thread in our balls – you could not cut it with you bar hands. The last part of the sewing – the actual closing of the ball is an art of it’s own taking some time to master to perfection.

One more way to make your own juggling balls is to use our “In case of emergency – 3ball T-shirt”. It has 12 panels to cut out and the sewing line marked already. But be sure to use it in case of emergency only – it will leave you with a T-shirt with a few holes

Most of the balls we sell here at JugglingEquipment.com are made by us, following high ball making standards. The pay we pay our workers is as good as the balls and they will provide you with endless hours of fun! So if you are here because you want to make your own, or buy the balls we make, we wish you happy juggling!