Quilt 2: A baseball Quilt for Jackson

After saying it would be a long while before I ventured into making another quilt, I have done it again! I bought the fabric for what I envisioned as a strip quilt- made up of rows & rows of alternating fabric. However, like the amateur that I am, I didn't get the amount of fabric that I needed initially, which meant that if I continued with the rows then I would have weird seam lines in the center where I was going to have to sew long strips together to fit across the width of the quilt. That looked terrible with solid fabric, so I nixed the idea all together.

I went through 3 other variations in my head & cutting the fabric yet again into smaller rectangles before just tossing the fabric aside in frustration. The fabric set there in neat little piles in my craft room for about a month (or more, really!). I came across this tutorial of sorts on a Monday night & decided that I could do this! I got my fabric together in a bag & headed over to my friend, Theresa's house. I knew she would be able to help me decide how to cut the fabric one LAST time so I could lay this thing out. It was amazing! In about half an hour, she had helped me decide how to cut the pieces I had, laid the thing out in her floor & then stacked the rows so it was ready for sewing when I got home! Whew! Isn't she amazing? I think sometimes I just need some moral support, but she helps on that end as well as just gets in there & helps me when I need it!

That night I peiced together the entire top! I spent the next night after that peicing the back & basting it all together. Then Thursday & Friday I quilted the top. I decided to only quilt across each row in the ditch rather than a bazillion times in rows across like the tutorial. I did this for many reasons, but one was that I couldn't see how to sew a straight line without the seams as my guide (with all that fabric up there, you can't tell what's up & what's down!) And also the time factor. It would have taken me about another week just to quilt the top with all those rows. I do think I would like the quilt better if I had done that, but it is very soft & more like a comforter & less like an official quilt this way. Since it was going on his bed & he liked how it felt, I figured it was fine!

Here is the finished project!

the back...