Sue Bower - Quilter's Finishing Touch

The 23rd annual Going to Bat for B.A.T. dinner was held at the Marriott Marquis hotel in New York on Tuesday, January 24. Let me tell you, MLB puts on one heck of an event!

Imagine the largest wedding reception you have ever attended, and multiply it to equal 110 tables of 12 people, plus the MLB staff, and hotel staff, and event volunteers. Whew! Let it suffice to say that we had a really nice time, although we had to leave early to catch the train to get home.

The silent auction was amazing, and I can state with 100% accuracy that there was only one quilt up for auction

The quilt sold for $1500, the high bidder was thrilled (if you’re reading this, please contact me–I’d love to know how you plan to use it) and the BAT people are very happy with the money it raised. The project was a success, and I’m glad it worked out as it did!

It’s been more than a month since my last post. Work, holidays, family issues, and a boatload of other things have gotten in the way and the “companion quilts” are not yet done. So they are on my to-do list for the first quarter of 2012, and BAT will still get them in a timely manner.

The “main event” (the BAT dinner) is a little more than two weeks away, and I’m really looking forward to attending it and seeing how this all plays out!

I’m currently pulling together a booklet to accompany the quilt, so that its new owner will have the documented history of how it came to be, and, how to take care of it to preserve it for years to come.

I promised photos of the labels, and here they are. This is the order in which they are attached to the bottom of the quilt.

A photo of the quilt (with me standing next to it) is now posted on BAT’s Facebook page. You can only see the top three rows, because the ceilings weren’t high enough to extend the photographer’s stand to full height. If you want to see the entire quilt, look through the previous posts, or, better yet, come to the Going to bat for BAT dinner in January

Spent part of the day yesterday taking the train to New York to deliver the quilt in person. It was a beautiful day, albeit a little chilly and rather windy, but that was OK. I had made arrangements to meet with two members of BAT’s operations staff–Erik Nilsen (Manager) and Dominique Correa (Coordinator), and took my portable photographer’s stand to show them how a quilt with a hanging sleeve can be displayed.

They loved it, and told me that BAT has never had an item like this for their annual fundraising event. So now they get to decide how best to present it to maximize its exposure and fundraising potential. They have some ideas, but need to brainstorm a little more.

The “Going to bat for BAT” dinner will be on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan.  Here’s the link to info about the event:

http://web.mlbcommunity.org/programs/baseball_assistance_team.jsp?content=dinner&partnerId=ed-5312883-231829216

I’ll post more details when I have them, but let it suffice to say that I was *very* happy with the reaction to the quilt and I’m enthusiastic about several of the ideas that we discussed.

I taught a t-shirt quilt class at a favorite local shop last Saturday (the Twins shirt was donated by the owners), and brought the quilt with me as an example. Coincidentally, one of my six students was also a baseball fan (with a Pirates bias, no less), and she brought a bunch of baseball team t-shirts to the class to learn the fusing and block making techniques!

Next Friday, I am going to New York to visit MLB’s corporate headquarters, and will be taking the quilt with me to hand it off to BAT. I’m *really* excited about this and am looking forward to meeting the people with whom I have been speaking via e-mail. I’ll report back on that after I get home.

Received a FedEx notification that it’s on the way back from the left side of the country and should be here by Friday or Saturday.

I’ve been working on the companion pieces and have the smaller of the two almost half-assembled.

I wound up attaching all eight labels to the bottom of the quilt (on the reverse side, of course), and then pressed the daylights out of the bottom border (hopefully it all still hangs flat).

Then I went off to Staples Tuesday evening to get a box for shipping. After work on Wednesday I folded the quilt, packed it up, and handed over the 11+ lb box to FedEx for Second Day Air delivery. Yes, that cost a few $ but I wanted to minimize the stopovers and the risk of a mysterious disappearance

Kept checking the FedEx app on my phone yesterday until I saw that it had been delivered–whew, what a relief!

Now I can clean up all the fabric scraps and get to work on the two small quilts. More on those later.

The hanging sleeve is attached and we took a few photos earlier in the week.

As I said before, this is a BIG quilt (it’s less than an inch off the floor with the photography stand extended to its full height!) and I couldn’t get far enough away in the foyer to get a straight on shot. So, here’s a photo taken at a slight angle.

And here’s a closeup of the grassy quilting:

The next step is to attach a label (or perhaps all eight labels, depending on how the weekend goes) and ship it next week.

Going to bat for BAT can be seen at Machine Quilters Exposition (MQX) in Portland, Oregon, from October 13-15. If you’re in the area, stop by, take a photo, and send it to me please

I’ve been working on embroidering labels and fighting with tension and puckering issues. Well, the light bulb *finally* came on a few days ago. Since this quilt is made using t-shirts, and t-shirts are made from knit fabrics, the labels should also be made using knit fabric! Took a few tries to get it right, but the “main” label now looks exactly as I want it to look.

Off to work on the other labels and will post photos later.

Progress continues to be made!

Went to Quilting Possibilities over the weekend and, lo and behold, they still had more than six yards of the grass fabric that I used for the borders. So I bought the rest of it!

I made 17 1/3 yards of bias binding on Sunday and attached it to the trimmed quilt on Monday. Now I have to do the hand finishing to the back–and being that I have a long distance (>400 inches) to go, it will take more than a couple of hours!

Slogged through the rain last night to get the right color of thread to finish the binding. All good.

The remaining tasks will be to make and attach the embroidered labels and a hanging sleeve, as this quilt will be exhibited at a major show next month. More details on that later.  .  .