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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Baseball Team Banner

This year my 8 year old son wanted to play baseball for the first time! I'm so excited because it is such a great sport and a way to experience teamwork. He has the BEST coach ever, he expects a lot from the kids but is also so supportive! I'm so happy for him! In only 4 weeks of practice, I've seen so much improvement, such a proud Mom!

At the parents meeting the coach was looking for a "volunteer" to make the team banner. It is used when the team walks in the opening day parade. At the meeting, I was trying to be very quiet and shy, the new parent who didn't want to make waves! Well, all the duties had been handed out and they were still looking for a banner-maker. You can see where this is going! Yes, I was the ONLY Mom with nothing to do! So I reluctantly volunteered myself to get this done for the team.

As soon as the meeting was done, I thought and thought and thought. Our team is the Phillies, and the banner had to have the team name on it along with all 11 kids' names. I had only 1 week to get the project done and no big creative ideas. BUMMER! I did some minor research, found the Phillies logo and then it hit me (Ouch!), just use the logo for the banner.

The team banner started out with a "bunch" of felt from Joanne Fabrics. Forgot to add the blue felt in the picture, but bought a couple yards of that too. Also bought a couple styrofoam balls because I thought I could use them (in some way) to create baseballs. Phillies has 2 i's so in the back of my mind I would dot the i's with baseballs.

Next I printed out the Phillies logo and took it to Staples to make an overhead transparency. Knowing that my sister owned an overhead projector, (how weird is that!) I knew it would be easy to make the cursive word on the felt. I traced the word backwards so after cutting I was sure not to have any of the ink showing.
The total length of the banner is 6' 6" and is 3" tall. I wanted the name to take up most of the space, the letters look pretty good at this point. This is the first part of the banner.
Next I cut out the blue and red for the background. To help the letters stand out I used blue stamp ink to shade the edges of each letter. It might be a little hard to see here, but I think it helps gives a little depth. To dot the i's I cut a styrofoam ball in half and painted it white. To make the red stitching I used a red dry erase maker - cute.
Creating the red, blue, and white bell was next. It was not to bad with the overhead projector. I think the worst part was placing all the pieces on the actual white banner making sure it is straight and gluing it down. To do this I used our king size bed! It was just enough room to spread everything out and not be crawling around on the floor! I glued (used Fabric Tac for the big pieces) all the background pieces first then attacked the kids' names.

My Sizzix die cut machine was prefect for the letters. I used the shadow letters (not sure of the exact name of the set) to cut out each kids' name. Also used the circle die for the baseball. I also used very light black ink to shadow each baseball so it stood out a little from the white background. To adhere the letters and baseballs I used my hot glue gun, that was much easier than the fabric glue.


PHEW!! TA-DAAAaaaa...Finally done. I bought a 10 foot PVC pipe from Home Depot so the kids could all hold it when walking in the parade. It was a huge hit with the team. At each baseball game we will hang it on the fence.
Go PHILLIES!!!

2 comments:

LeAnne said...

Well, living near Philadelphia, this Phillies banner would rival anything we have here! What a good mom you are--they had better appreciate this awesome creation!

Flyermom said...

This is a great banner! Out of all the links I found, this was the most helpful. My banner is due in 2 weeks. I THINK YOU JUST SAVED MY LIFE. So, thank you :)