Temari Pattern 99SC01 instructions

There are two things that make this pattern a little bit unique – first, the stars (kikus) are "twisted" obliquely rather than being on a typical north/south orientation, and second, the marking threads for the stars are removed, leaving the stars to "float."

Begin by wrapping about a 3" ball in the color of your choice. With junk thread mark your ball in a simple five divide, with obi. (These threads will be removed so do not use good metallic … plain sewing thread in a contrasting color works fine … and do not tack intersections.) Around the north pole, put a pin on each of the five threads, about 1/2 inch from the intersection. With your good metallic marking thread stitch a line around these five pins, forming a pentagon around the north pole. Label the five pentagon points A, B, C, D and E. Mark and stitch a similar pentagon around the south pole. Label the five pentagon points numbers 1 through 5 – with 1 being on the same vertical line as A, 2 on the same vertical line as B, etc.

Once you have marked the pentagons, with your good metallic thread add a marking line from point A of the north pole pentagon, down to point 2 on the south pole pentagon. Then, add a good marking line from point B on the north pole pentagon to point 3 on the south pole pentagon. Continue in this fashion until you have all five oblique lines marked with good thread. At this point you can remove your vertical junk thread lines, but do not yet take out the obi junk thread line. Your temari should now have a pentagon at the north pole, a pentagon at the south pole, and five roughly diamond-shaped elements twisting around the ball.

Each of the five diamonds is already horizontally divided by the junk obi thread. Now, again with your junk thread, add a marking line lengthwise through each of the diamonds, and then add another "X" bisecting the sides. Each diamond should now be divided by 8 junk marking threads. You can stitch the pattern of your choice over these 8 threads. I first did the smaller "X's" in kiku stitch in green, then did the elongated top kiku in shades of pink. Be certain when stitching these patterns to take a good bite into the ball, because when you are finished you should very carefully remove all remaining junk marking threads. Embellish the north and south pole pentagons as you choose. I did the swirl stitch with my good marking metallic thread.