I’m so excited to share this quilt with you! So naturally I took way too many pictures of it and put them all in this post.
My Ryan has been asking for a basketball quilt ever since I made the football quilt years ago, and finally his basketball quilt dreams came true.
This one was so much fun to make. The pattern uses straightforward piecing, no templates, no paper piecing, and no tricky seams. It comes together much faster than you would expect, especially if you chain piece all the block parts at once.
For the orange fabric in my quilt I used Kona Cotton in Carrot. For the black I used Kona in Charcoal (it appears black without being too harsh), and for the gray background of my quilt I used the Essex Linen Blend in Graphite by Robert Kaufman.
I had such a hard time deciding on what colors to use for my quilt, but here are a few other variations that I loved. The grey and black one is still my favorite!
I ended up quilting this one myself, because I made a last minute change to the pattern and had to re-make the quilt. It’s a long story for another day….but I ended up really enjoying quilting this one with an all over large stipple pattern.
It’s easy to get stuck on how to quilt something like this, with large blocks that are a different color than your background fabrics. I usually recommend choosing a neutral color of thread that matches the majority of your quilt (in this case I used a light gray), and just go for it with an all over pattern. You won’t notice the quilting as much on the blocks when it’s finished…and it will be finished!!!!! If you’re extra enthused about quilting you can also do orange in just the basketballs, then go back through and quilt the background with a different thread.
Making this quilt gave me nightmares flashbacks of playing high school basketball. I was super tall (I’m 5’11”), so the coaches thought I must be really good at basketball. Boy were they wrong! I don’t think I gained control of noodely arms and legs until my second year of college at least. I’m pretty sure my 7 year old is already better than I ever was.
This pattern has been in the works for a LONG time…so I’m pretty relieved to have it done and out in the wild!
The PDF of the Slam Dunk pattern can be found here, or the Paper version can be found here…and if you made it to the end of this really long post, thank you for reading it!
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