Ben's vintage sport blocks

Onto #6. This one is a full sized quilt made for my nephew. I had always wanted to make him one and I finally got to it when he turned 10. I started this quilt when I was pregnant in late 2008. It was finished April 2010. I had a lot going on once my son was born. There was no way to pick up a needle for almost a year. I remember sitting by the window in my family room and tacking on the binding. This time it was a real binding! I found a tutorial on Heather Bailey's website that was really easy. The print out is kept amongst my quilting things and is pulled out every time. I also watched a video by Marci Baker of Alicia's Attic on utube almost 100 times. I used these same methods on Evan's and Elyse's quilts and forgot to mention them.

I created this pattern from scratch. I only bought a few different fabrics so I had to be creative. I knew I wanted to do something different in the center so I created blocks from strips of fabrics. For the rest of the quilt I made monochromatic 4 patches from 1 sport fabric and three coordinating fabrics and used this great vintage looking baseball and football print for a full size block. Then I bought solid black for the sashing. (this I love, but having a white dog with lots of hair made it painful to keep clean) I didn't have enough of any one of the fabrics for binding so I took what was left over and made it multi-colored. I think it turned out really nice. It is very normal for me to buy a bunch of coordinating fabrics and a main fabric without any design in mind. That's part of the mystery and excitement.

The big block on the left is one piece of fabric. I  hand stitched all the blocks then tied red and yellow floss into the black sashing. The back is all black and you can see the yellow and red thread used for the hand stitching.

My nephew loves this quilt. He plays baseball and football so it's very appropriate for him. My mom said he sleeps with it every night. I love to hear that people enjoy homemade objects.

January 2011: Evan and Ben and my grandparents house in MI.

I don't have a photo of this quilt finished. I'll have to beg my sister to send me one.