Original pattern written by Susan Leishman July 2000

A temari in a Japanese book inspired this pattern but the directions and photos are original to Sue L. The disgram is no necessarily to scale. This temari takes a little longer to mark than others but one the marking is done the pattern works up easily and fast. You will need a 4 inch wrapped mari, 4 DMC pearl cotton colors: dark, medium and light plus an accent color; a thin metallic and a thicker accent metallic about the same weight as the DMC. Sue used a variegated metallic for accenting.

Use the thin metallic to do a complex 8 division. Next use the same thin metallic to divide each of the 6 squares formed by this division into 64 tiny, equal sized squares. See photo. Do this by placing pins along each side of the large squares, dividing the sides into 8 equal sections, then exit your needle at one of these pins and carry the thread completely around the ball and back to where you started. Each time you reach a pin along the sides of the squares, loop around the thread, catching a few threads of the mari, so that the thread is held securely in place at each pin. Keep adding threads until all the large squares are divided. Next tack these dividing threads along the diagonal threads that go from corner to corner of each large square so that everything is securely held in place. Now the rest is very easy because you just use these tiny squares as guides to place your pins.

Using your accent color, work a triangle at the corner of one large square, around the area colored orange in the diagram at left. Work outward until 5 rows are done. Next work around the 3 diamonds colored gray in the same accent color. Work outwards for 5 rows. The diamonds will overlap the triangle. See side photo of finiished ball. Do this a total of 8 times, so that each of the 6 large squares has a triangle and 3 diamonds in each corner. Optional: This step may be omitted, but I think it adds a nice extra touch. Using the thicker metallic, add diagonal lines from the center of one triangle to the center of the triangle in the opposite corner of the large square. See the red lines in the diagram. This will go over the thinner metallic marking line. Now using the thicker metallic, work diamonds around the diamonds in the photo that are colored yellow. Then work 4 more rows in the light color DMC, followed by a row of metallic. Work 4 of the light colored diamonds in each of the 6 large original squares. Next work a row of metallic around each green diamond in the diagram, followed by 4 rows of the medium color and a row of metallic. Do 4 of these in each of the 6 large squares. Finally, work a row of metallic around the blue diamond, followed by 4 rows of the dark color and a final row of metallic. You're done!