Sewing or embroidery on baseballs and softballs is a pretty new thing and I have enjoyed making some special balls and thought I would share a few. My typical orders are for name and numbers for student athletes, such as these:
However, I have embroidered and laced up some very unique and special balls over the last year or so. My most recent ball involved the birth of my latest and probably last grandchild. Here is the ball I did for my sweet grandson Cason:
Here in Texas we had a terrible tragedy occur to a ladies’ college softball team on a dark sorrowful night. The team had a game in Oklahoma and was traveling back to Texas in the team van. Their van was headed south on the highway when a semi-truck crossed over and hit the van head on. Four of the young ladies died in the collision and several were injured. As a memento for the girls’ parents, I made softballs with their names, numbers, and college in the school colors. The coaches asked me if I could do a ball for each of them with the numbers of the 4 girls on the ball, so I also made a couple of balls for the coaches. Here are the balls I made:
They say everything is bigger in Texas. Well, I have seen some pretty large homecoming mums here lately. When I went to high school, a mum was a mum. You got a chrysanthemum flower with ribbons and ribbon chains and a few little plastic footballs on it. Then when my kids went to school, they had double and triple mums and even the guys got one on an arm band. Things have changed and now the homecoming mums are so large that they cannot be pinned on your shoulder, but have to be hung around the neck. I had a customer (softball player) contact me about making a softball with initials on it to go into the center of a mum. My worry was this was going to be too heavy so we decided to put Styrofoam and quilt batting in the center of the ball. This is how the mum turned out:
Another customer contacted me and told me his girlfriend is a softball pitcher and he planned to propose to her. He wanted me to make him a softball that said “Be My Wife” on the top, and his girlfriend’s name, in pink, on the sweet spot. So this is how it turned out:
He asked that I make him two of these balls because he was going to cut into the ball and hide an engagement ring inside so that the flap would open and she would see the ring inside. He wanted two balls in the event that he ruined the first ball trying to cut into it, and some extra lacing thread for rethreading the flap.
When I sent the balls to my customer I told him I couldn’t imagine what he was going to do and would appreciate a few pictures so I could see what his plans were. Some people have such great imaginations and are so creative. He amazed me when I saw these:
Then last month I received an email telling me that Kristin said “YES” to his proposal and he was kind enough to send pictures and allow me permission to use them in this post. Thank you for letting me be involved in the process. Well done Rob, I hope you and Kristen have a long and happy marriage!
