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I love otedama, don’t ask me to do it, I’m just an admirer. I am about as coordinated as a drunken moose. But I can make the ojami just fine which does take a little coordination, but at least when it comes to avoiding needle pricks and sewing my own thumbs into the bag I can manage.

This is such a good craft for using up strips of scrap fabric. Each one is made of 4 pieces. For a western sized juggling bag, about 1.5 by 3 inches stitched with a scant 3/8 seam, and for otedama sized bags just slightly larger (the proportions should be length= width*2) about 2.75 inches wide to 5.5 inches long with a scant 3/8th inch seam.

Arrange the strips into a pin wheel, then sew the face of 4 strips so that they meet. Then sew the each strip down and around the corners (this is easier done than described) leaving one side of the opposite face open to fill with azuki beans, but not stuffing the beans, and then blind stitching the final seam closed. Otedama is played like jacks (at first) so too many beans makes it harder to manipulate the ojami.

Mine are made with batik dyed linen scraps (I didn’t sew the texture, the fabric came like that) left over from a fish shaped pillow that I made for a friend many years ago. The texture equaled fish scales to me, unfortunately it was one of those projects that worked much better in concept than execution but at least I had the gorgeous scraps to play with on a slow rainy Oregon day.