The Baubles you've seen so far are just the ones I consider fit for publication, but there were others...
So far I had been using a simple 8 piece pattern from an old craft book. Then I went looking for other possibilities, and found these juggling ball patterns, free downloads in PDF format.
I experimented with a few of these, but the only one I liked was the dodecahedron* - made of 12 pentagons, or 5 sided pieces. Only trouble was, it's tricky to sew by machine. It can be done, but I suspect handsewing would be just as fast.
Eventually I settled for an adaptation of my original pattern, based on an equilateral triangle, with slightly curved sides. After several attempts, I arrived at a template that gives me a Bauble slightly larger than the early ones, exactly 12 inches in circumference. I discovered that maintaining an accurate seam allowance is vital; even a fraction of an inch difference multiplies considerably over 12 seams!
Stuffing a bauble is an art, one I wish I could say I've mastered! But every so often, I wind up with a funny-shaped, definitely not-quite-spherical object. Perhaps the seams don't match, or I mucked up the closing stitches.
I've learned to turn this to my advantage by using the 'failures' as design balls - happily drawing on them, trying out new techniques, sticking pins in them, wrapping rubber bands around them, testing paints and generally having a good time.
I've learned a lot about the geometry of spheres with these balls, and even read further on the subject at Wikipedia.*Until recently, words like dodecahedron, and terms like Platonic solids, spherical geometry and great circle were not a part of my everyday vocabulary - I'm the one who failed Geometry at High School, right?
(I failed at Art too, by the way, because I 'couldn't draw'.) So who's laughing now, Mr B----?
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