Play Ball! Finished!

Hello friends.  Remember that Sneak Peak fabric I showed you several posts ago?  Well, the quilt is finally finished!  As you can tell by the inspiration fabric I showed you, the quilt is a sports themed piece.

Besides this inspiration fabric, I also chose 4 other fabrics:  baseballs on green, basketballs on red, soccer balls on blue and footballs on green.  The center squares finish at 7 1/2", and each square has a 1" border in one of 5 different colors and patterns.  The border fabrics  chosen were a dark blue with stars, red, orange, green and yellow textural prints.  Each main theme print was bordered by one of these 5 colors.  No two squares are bordered the same.  In all, I made 25 squares.  I arranged the blocks in a staggered arrangement (thanks in part to my good friend and fellow quilter Cathy K.), and split two of the blocks to make a full square inner portion of the quilt. 

I wanted to set the blocks apart from the outer border by more than just their own smaller borders.  I chose a white tone on tone number print, to emulate the numbers in the inspiration fabric.

I used a blue flannel on the back, because this quilt is made to be cuddled with, and what is more cuddly than flannel?

I pieced the binding from strips cut from the five block border fabrics.  I like to sew my binding down by machine, and chose a fun stitch that reminded me of the stitching on a baseball.

And now, here is the finished quilt:

This quilt measures 61" x 61", which is Denis' maximum arm span (he's my P.A.--Photographer's Assistant).