These block pieces were purchased on ebay in 2002. The fabric scraps were hand stitched to a foundation of 1943 newspaper pages. The stitches were not as close as I would have liked, but I couldn’t figure out how to go over her stitching. In the end I just removed the newspaper — then soaked, pressed and re-cut the pieces. The original shape would have created a kind of rounded square with the four muslin pieces, but I decided to cut the curve more deeply which makes a nice circle when the muslin pieces are joined– the baseball. I machine stitched around the outside of each piece before hand stitching the muslin pieces into the curves.
Because I was a little worried about the structural integrity of her stitching, I decided to do a fairly close quilting design with horizontal and vertical lines. The binding and backing are the same cadet blue fabric. I like the way it turned out, and the stitching has held up just fine. It’s actually pretty gratifying to complete another quilter’s unfinished project.
Crazy Baseball Quilt
Unknown Quilter, 1943, and
Martha Dellasega Gray, 2005
hand pieced, hand quilted
57″ x 81″
