The Latest Guy Quilt: NFL, Quilted with Footballs

This was fun:

Since my oldest son had a birthday recently, and since I hadn't made him a quilt in years, I needed to make a guy quilt.

When I had the idea to do something with NFL fabrics, I decided to check eBay for a deal on some team fabrics. I wasn't sure what I would find, but I figured the selection online would be pretty varied. 

Almost right away, I found a set of NFL fabrics on eBay -- precut 4" squares, two from each of the 32 NFL football teams. Perfect. Easy. (A little overpriced, maybe, but where else would I find all 32 fabrics in one place!?)

Pretty quickly, I decided what to do with 64 squares (+1 extra solid square) -- A basic Single Irish Chain layout. 

Simple. No frills. Guy quilt.

I added a border row above and below, made with shirt-cottons (solids, stripes, plaids) to add some length to make a nice-sized throw quilt. (It's about 55" x 68".)

The fabric combo turned out nice (brown cotton sheet fabric for the top, and something fuzzy-textured-warm for the backing). My favorite thing is how the quilting turned out.

Free-motion meander with FOOTBALLS quilted in! This was so fun, and surprisingly, not too complicated.

Maybe I'll take some more pics and do a picture tutorial on the FMQ footballs sometime. (I was surprised at how little I found online about how to quilt football designs into a quilt! I found a couple of ways that it works.)

Anyway. This was fun. And my son loves it. I'm happy about that.

Another Carolina Panther

While I was making the Carolina Panthers jeans quilt, my oldest son asked me if I could sew a smaller Panthers logo for him ... He just wanted it stitched onto a fleece blanket.

So, ever since then, I've been meaning to get to it.

This past weekend, I took a bit of time, a bit of Heat 'n Bond, a bit of white fabric, teal fabric, and black velvet ... and sewed up a Panthers logo.

The Panther is just about 10 inches high, zig-zagged along the raw edges, so it was relatively quick.
  

So, the new Carolina Panthers logo on a fleece blanket joins my first-ever jeans quilt on my oldest son's bed ... I'm hoping that the "raggedy" look works well with the plush, fuzzy fleece ...

Linking this post to this week's Little Quilt Monday at Pieceful Life

Finished Carolina Panthers Quilt

It's done! The Black-Jeans quilt with my rendition of a Carolina Panthers logo (I mentioned my inspiration in my post a couple months ago) is all finished!

I realize that the above picture looks a lot like the picture from my post a month ago, when the quilt was not done, but there are a lot of differences ...

Some quilting ... 

Diagonally through most of the squares ... except in those spots where pockets and labels made that impractical. 

Since the backing is awesome, sturdy velvety-plush-fleece, and since there's no batting, the quilt didn't need much quilting, just enough to hold it together.

I love the backing! Super-soft and fuzzy.

The edging turned out pretty cool. I decided to go for simple, and just turn the already-finished edge of the fleece to the front and zig-zag.

The corners aren't perfect, but I'm OK with that.

 

As usual, I love all the fun jeans-y details in the quilt ...

Oh, and since it's enormous (80" x 80", I think, but I forgot to measure), this quilt weighs a ton. I think we're going to especially enjoy this when colder weather comes ... which will be just in time for football season ... 

Really happy with the way this one turned out.