Today was Opening Day for the youngest kid’s baseball season. This is his first year playing not only in a new division, but also with a new program. He actually hasn’t played in two years. When we made the decision to move last year, we held him out of the baseball program in Texas since we were unsure of our actually date of move, and didn’t want to pull him mid-season. I must say, for having to take a year off, he’s doing pretty well.
When the practice season began, his coach sent out a request if anyone would be willing to help out with the team banner. I gave it a day of thought and then offered to take care of it. Today, the banner was due for the parade. I literally finished it last night around 11 pm. The design style changed multiple times, the vision of how it would be stitched, the colors, everything required a few adjustments over the weeks. But last night it was finally done, and I was quite proud of my accomplishments.
This morning as we pulled up to drop him off with his team, I saw the coach’s smile as Chris unfurled the banner for the team. That made me feel good. Keep in mind this is a type of project I had never done before, never seen one done in little league, and had very little to work off of. But there was a smile, and I was more than satisfied that a job well done had been completed. We drove on and prepared for a day of baseball to come.
After the parade, and the introductions on the field, it was announced that the judges had made their decisions on the best banner for each division. I was pretty shocked when mine was picked as the best for the minor league. I had no idea there was actually a judging to be done, or a competition or anything, just needed to make a banner for the kid’s team. What an honor to be picked.
So I figured up a few quick stats on what went into this banner. Total of about 5 yards, close to 1 million stitches, about 18 hours of embroidery time, and 6 hours of sewing time. That’s a lot of work for 1 free banner. But the smile on those boy’s faces when they won, and the excitement it brought my own kid was more than worth all those hours. Will I offer to do it again next year? Yeah, probably so, it was quite fun to do the design process and see it all come together. For the record, all the embroidery work (minus the Ironbirds lettering) were done on a Pfaff Creative Icon. The Ironbirds letters were done on a Husqvarna Viking Platinum MN1000. The applique and sewing part was completed on a Juki HZL-NX7 Kirei. Plenty of stitches under multiple needles to get the job done.
On The Farm & Under My Needle 
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