Project Three

     Now that the church quilt exhibit is over and the Great Wall of Lowell is finished, I can turn my thoughts to the third project of the summer. This one drove me buggier than the other two combined.
      I saw on Pinterest a truly fun baseball quilt someone made with five baseballs on it, only one a fully round ball.  The other four were part of balls.  It was a really impressive quilt and I said, "I can do that!"  Yeah. Right. My plan went from five balls to three to one.
      This quilt is supposed to be Mikey's big boy quilt.  The only one he has from me is the quilt I made when he was born and soon he will be four.  The little guy kind of got swept under the rug. It's definitely his turn.  Problem was I fell for this quilt but thought it fit Charlie more because he's the born baseball player.  But their momma said, "well, make two!"  Yeah.  Right.  During this summer of Projects One and Two I talked to Mikey a few times and discovered he loves baseball, too.  So, ok.  He gets the first one.

    I can't tell you how much I miserated over this thing.  Give me another wall to paint!  Have my fingers and quilting brain gone to rust?  I can't figure anything out anymore??
   The ball in the original quilt was 44 inches in diameter.  This one is 36 inches.  So, of course the reds the maker of the original quilt cut for the stitching were waayyy too big for my ball.  Something I discovered after cutting and ironing them.  So, with PH's baseball eyes we re-figured and I cut them down to a better size.

    I spent two - TWO - evenings pinning them them into place. Because I was sitting on the floor, bad for my back and disposition, and watching television, I put the stitching going the same direction on both sides. Grrrr.  Redo. Now, go to bed. Can you even get off the floor??  Nope. Don't watch.
    My plan was to applique these stitchings by hand.  Because that's what I do, so why not? Right now they are pinned but I was advised to put a dab of glue on them to hold them in place.  I don't fuse and I don't glue so this was a big concession for me. I also thought if they are glued and there to stay I could possibly manage, if I was drugged, to sew them on by machine. Using the machine for this scares me more than anything.  I don't have a sewing station, a state of the art machine, a flat surface the machine sits in, nor confidence in the machine and so I don't use it and therefore out of practice and not good at it.  I'm rethinking that. I plan to sew them on the ball before putting the ball on the front fabric.  There was some wobble on the edges but now it seems to be manageable.
    If I'm making two of these things, they will be done together. So the next step is to put the stitching on the other ball for the second quilt.
     A lot of angst and a long post for a couple of little balls.  But there you have it.

     We had some friends over for dinner last night to see the wall and one of the guys put it on Instagram.  If you Instagram you can look via several hash tags (whatever they are) and one of them is #Great Wall of Lowell.  Or try #Pure Michigan.  He rattled off a few more but I don't do hashtags so wasn't catching them all in my brain.  Oops! I copied the photo here!