Tuesday, May 28, 2013

iiit'sss....alive!!

Ten years ago, our oldest was given his very first quilt, made by Grandma CynDe.

It lived in South Florida.

It moved up to North Carolina.

It traveled to various locations in Russia.

Finally, it settled in Tampa, Florida.

It has been drooled on, barfed on, peed on, pooped on, and in all likelihood, bled on.

It has been washed at least a hundred times, none too gently and probably with the wrong kind of detergent. It's been dragged all over the house and outside of the house and into cars and tents and airplanes.

Most importantly, it's the Dinosaur blanket. On most days of the week ending in "day," the kids play Dinosaur with their dad. The etymology of this particular name is too convoluted to get into; suffice it to say it involves Papa being draped in a blanket and crawling around grabbing, eating, and pooping out our children. I know, it's weird. Please don't call social services on us. Anyway it's super funny.

Over the years, a few popped seams had turned into big tears in the thin fabric. I felt like maybe it was time to retire the Dinosaur blanket but my husband, who is usually not very sentimental about stuff, was adamantly against it.



"Can't you just fix it?" he asked innocently.

Ugh. I hadn't even so much as LOOKED at my sewing machine since December, and I wasn't in a hurry to set her up again. And the quilt was in such bad shape. But he gave me the puppy eyes, and I found myself plugging in my machine and picking out thread that kinda sorta matched.

I figured there was really only one thing to do: go over all the tears with a satin stitch. I know that this is essentially perforating fragile fabric but I wasn't about to spend a year trying to fix a beat up woobie that will likely spend the rest of its short life being whipped around, stepped on, and formed into a sack for carrying around small children.



It seemed to work pretty well. For now. Sure, the thread doesn't really match and it looks like a surgical procedure gone wrong, but hey. It's in one piece. And thus the Dinosaur blanket was reborn, and renamed.

Introducing: Frankenblanket.

2 comments:

Lynz said...

Frankenblanket?!? Bua-ha-ha! So. Does that make you Doctor Frankenblanket? Or Jenngor. Heh.

LynneP said...

I love Frankenblanket and all the love and memories that it holds. Nice that your husband insisted/begged you to fix it and that you listened. It may not be the most beautiful heirloom but it may be the heirloom with the most/best family memories.