Applique Basketball Quilt

For your basketball, you'll need:

- one orange circle

- another circle cut the same size (can be interfacing, or just normal fabric)

- some strips of black fabric cut 1 inch wide (how many strips you'll need depends on how big your ball is, but 3 strips measuring 1" x width of fabric will do most sizes).

Prepare your strips like so:  (you can see my tutorial with written instrucions here)

Its a little tricky with a strip only 1 inch wide, but it should look like the picture below when you're finished.

Free hand the lines of the basketball - giving them some curvature.  Sew on the edge of one side of the strap (as pictured below) then go on to sew the other side of the strap down.

Now you're ready to applique your basketball to your fabric block.  There are a lot of methods for applique - but the way I like to think of it is that you're just top-stitching something down.  So, here's what Lori Holt does.  Its a long post, so I put the relevant picture here - and I think this method is easiest.

Cut out another circle the side of your basketball to use as your "interfacing" (white or something without a pattern so it won't show through).  Place them right sides together and sew all the way around.

 Then, cut a little hole only in the interfacing and turn it right sides out. 

 Now you're got a perfect circle ready to sew onto the quilt block.

Here and here are some good appliqueing tutorials if you want to see other methods.

Here's what my kitchen looks like right now.  Just three girls all creating together.