Sue Bower - Quilter's Finishing Touch

First, I have three more contributions to acknowledge. Sue M., Meryl K., and Steve W. were kind enough to contribute toward the purchase of the backing fabric. It’s a green print with vines that reminded me of ivy–not quite like the ivy at Wrigley Field, but it looks nice. Thanks so much!

I’ve heard on more than one occasion “it’s not a quilt until it’s QUILTED.” Well, using that guideline it’s now safe to say that Going to bat for BAT is officially a quilt!

Here are a few photos taken during the quilting process. It’s quilted using an edge-to-edge grass pattern to give texture without taking attention away from the stars of the show (the t-shirts). Also, since baseball is a game played on grass, it’s in tune with the overall theme.

Here’s the top border and row 1:

Rows 2 and 3:

Rows 4 and 5:

Rows 5 and 6:

And the part that will make any long-arm quilter smile–a bottom border that doesn’t flare 🙂

I’ve ordered a different fabric for the binding (think warning track and you’ll get my drift), and it should be here in a couple of days.

I have good news and bad news to report. First the bad news:

Here I am in central New Jersey, it’s raining like crazy, Hurricane Irene is coming up the East Coast, and I’m working on quilting row 10 of 15 on Going to bat for BAT. I had originally planned to have the quilting part done by now, but will I admit to getting sidetracked over the last two weeks.I’m pushing myself tonight to get as much done as possible, as I fear that we could have a power outage that would bring my progress to a screeching halt.

The good news is that I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at least, for the quilting part of the project.

Whenever I work on a big quilt like this one, it’s a great feeling to finally see the bottom border again!!! 🙂

Well, we just had a momentary power surge. While my longarm machine is on a UPS battery backup (as is this computer), I don’t want to tempt fate any more tonight. Hopefully I can start up again in the morning and get these last rows done.

PS I have been taking photos as I go, so I will try to edit a couple of them tomorrow and post them as well.

The batting finally arrived yesterday–I’ve been chomping at the bit since I ordered it. Fortunately for the UPS driver, I wasn’t here when he left the box on the porch 🙂

So the backing is loaded on the frame. I’m glad I bought 110 inch wide fabric, as it shrunk almost 5 inches in width after washing and drying! Whew, nothing like cutting it close.  .  .

Several of the t-shirt contributors have seen the pieced quilt top, and have liked what they’ve seen. Dorothy H. commented that the wood-grained fabric sashing looks like bats. YAY, that’s exactly what I wanted to accomplish. Grace H. really liked the grassy border, and, Hugh B. commented that “it’s gonna be a BIG quilt.”

Will post photos once the quilt is on the frame so you can get a glimpse of where things currently stand. And stay tuned for that surprise announcement to which I alluded in an earlier post (heh heh heh).

I spent part of the weekend working on the quilt top–sewing the horizontal sashing to the block rows, pressing, sewing the rows into groups of two rows (making sure that the order is correct), pressing, and finally, sewing the three groups into the actual top, and pressing yet again. The ironing press got a lot of use, as you might imagine 🙂

I’m now waiting for the batting and thread to arrive–as I just ordered them on Saturday.

Speaking of batting and thread, we have two more donors to acknowledge:

Judy F., who is married to Stephen F. (the Giants shirt contributor) was kind enough to contribute the batting for this quilt. I will be using a particular 80/20 cotton-poly blend that works really well with t-shirt quilts. Thanks Judy!

Kathi H. made a contribution that has  been used to purchase a particular thread that will be used to quilt this. Thanks Kathi!