Needlework Tuesday - March Madness Basketball Bag

 It was ages ago that I showed you this lovely all over basketball print.  Finally, I could not put it off any longer, it's March Madness for all the basketball fans.  This fabric was purchased with daughter's room mate in mind, who is a long time basketball fan.

I layered the themed fabric up with some cotton batting and a complimentary orangeish backing and quilted it with circles/loops.

 It doesn't look orange, but it really is a nice peach/orange.  Add some rick-rack for design, a zipper and a couple of seams, and voila, a new basketball.

 with the batting and quilting, it puffs out the sides of the bag so it does sort of look like a ball.  Daughter took it back to school sunday evening to deliver to her roomie.

 The weather here was rather frightful last week with a few days of freezing rain.  Ice on everything.  Good time to be inside sewing.  Once the icy pellets stopped hitting my face, I was outside with the camera wandering in my yard.  Our trees and shrubs seemed to have escaped fairly unscathed. Even though there were great icicles on the sumac, it didn't stop the birds from coming to eat the seeds.

 No sure how the yew will fare, it was so heavily iced.  The thing grows like a weed, I hack it back and next thing you know, it's grown up and threatening to cover the front windows again.

On Sunday, we gathered at my sister's for dinner and mom brought her latest quilt projects.  This one is for Ava, her newest great granddaughter who was less than a week old.   

 This one is for her next great granddaughter who was due that day, though we are still waiting her arrival.

 I love the backing on this one.  I'm sure it will keep the little one amused for hours.

 Now on to the block of the month that I am doing with my local guild.  I've added the next border.  This one was designated as a resting spot for our eyes, so I picked a fabric with a simple repeated pattern.  I have the instructions for the next pieced round.  Eight ladies brought their quilts to guild last evening.  It's amazing how different they look with the different fabric choices.  Many of us have made slight pattern variations and different interpretations of the instructions, making it fun to pick out the adaptations.   I plan to take photos of them all when we added the final borders.

Finally, daughter's socks.  I have turned the heels, using a short row method in garter stitch.  This was a new approach and not sure how much I like it, though it was easy to do.  This photo shows the one pattern repeat on the back of the leg.  I still have quite a bit of wool left, and will keep knitting the sock taller. At the rate I'm going, I might even have final photos for you next week.

Needlework Tuesday is a regular weekly post where I share the progress of my various needlework projects over the past week. I enjoy the encouragement that I receive from my readers and in return visit their blogs and cheer them on with theirs. You are welcome to grab the cute little mouse and create your own Needlework Tuesday post. Leave a comment with a link and I'll be sure to visit with you.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and found a bit of stitching time.  Mister Linky is waiting below for a link to your recent needlework post.