Have A Ball Quilt For Colt – OMG Finished

We have a very special finish to share today. At the end of 2021, we decided it was time to make a big boy quilt for Colt. At that time, he was about to turn two and had moved from his crib to a full-size mattress placed on the floor. It wasn’t hard to come up with a theme for him as his dad has had him in Spring Training since he could hold a ball. Spring Training for many sports but probably most noteworthy would be as a baseball player for the Cubs. We’ll have to see if that early training works out for him, but I will add that he already has quite an arm on him. He also has a talent for basketball and can make swish shots with ease now. The Have A Ball quilt is a celebration of five different sports, and we’ll link up our post with Patty at Elm Street Quilts.

Have A Ball Inspiration

It’s fairly easy to find inspiration for any topic on Pinterest, and that’s the first place we went looking. Sue found this comforter in her daily email and thought that with just a few modifications it would be perfect! I had to agree and we started forming a plan.

We liked the look of the alternating balls but we wanted to add golf as it’s one of the sports his daddy likes to play. With five featured sports balls, we decided that six blocks of each, for a total of 30 appliqué blocks would work. Now to find some fabrics . . . we headed to the Fat Quarter Shop for almost all. They had a nifty grass-colored fabric that would be perfect for the background of the football, not to mention a brown pebbled look for the football itself. Moonscape Bronze for the soccer ball background, Bramble Patch Gray Spatter for the golf ball, and a nice royal blue for the baseball.

Here are the images we used as our inspiration and templates for the thirty balls needed to make the Have A Ball quilt. I am especially drawn to the grass and the tee for the golf ball!

Have A Ball Appliqué Begins

I love a good appliqué project and this one qualifies in spades. Thirty good-size balls go rather quickly although the extra touches needed to make each ball special do take a bit of attention. Let’s start with the soccer ball, and what I learned along the way.

As you can see, I learned the hard way that a ball is curved. Therefore, the lines should not be straight and drawn in exactly with a ruler but rather arched to follow the curvature of the ball. We also discovered that the placement of the black shapes actually serves a purpose and relates to each other. Oops! I hope no one studies our soccer balls as they are definitely not sanctioned versions. Appliquéing the soccer balls went fairly quickly and I definitely developed a better method as I worked through the six shapes. Toward the last one, I was double-stitching the lines to make them stand out more and to make them look more realistic. I still have a LOT to learn!

Footballs Have a Ball

By far, the applique of the football was the most labor-intensive out of the five we chose. We elected to use white bias tape for the laces. That meant cutting short pieces of tape along with a longer piece to follow the shape of the ball itself.

Most of the time, I appliquéd with black thread but for the laces, I chose to use white thread instead. The grass background for the football is the first use but you’ll see it again on the golf ball block.

Golf Fore the Win

As I just mentioned, the golf ball block shares the grassy background fabric first used for the football block. Of course, a golf tee is almost always set in grass, so that was a natural choice.

I am not real thrilled with the one dimension look the golf ball has, but it is what it is. I tried adding some shading on one side but I think I chose too light of a thread to even be noticed. Each of the six golf balls have a different colored tee!

Basketball and Baseball For the Win

The basketballs use a similar technique as the football, sharing the use of bias tape. It was a little tricky following the curve needed to make it look realistic but they turned out okay. The baseball features red thread and is stitched using a programmed stitch my Elna offers.

I don’t seem to have a picture closeup of the basketball for some reason! Oh well, you can see the bias tape fairly well on this shot of all five balls.

Have A Ball Quilt Top

Since the blocks were 15″, once we decided on a layout the rows and overall quilt top came together really quickly. It’s funny how we made changes with the block layout and still wish we had made others.

We ended up with no soccer in the fifth row but didn’t notice that until the binding was on! A little too late to make that switch for sure.

Colt’s Have A Ball Quilt At Home

Sunday, we sent Nicole and Colt home with his finished quilt. His new sheets match his quilt perfectly and it seems that the new quilt makes jumping all the MORE fun. Don’t you know he just had to study the soccer ball?!!

Finally, a shot showing the cute paw prints on the back, reminiscent of his buddy the black lab, Zeus . . .

and a ta-da shot of the finished quilt!

We’re happy to have this project finished and that Colt can be covered in our love! We will link up with Elm Street Quilts and Patty’s monthly One Monthly Goal (OMG) linky party. We find that so motivating for keeping our projects moving forward.

♥ ♥ ♥

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