The Crying Blanket

My husband’s grandmother made him the most excellent quilt in all the land.  It’s snuggly, thick, and absolutely loaded with warm fuzzies.  If you get sad at my house, chances are you’ll soon be wrapped in this awesome blanket.  It’s hard to cry for long when you’re curled up in it! Here’s a pic:

Fantastic, right?  That is, until you look closely:

Some of the squares are so old that they’re literally falling apart!  Someone repaired a few of the squares several years ago by simply sewing them back together, but the fabric is now so fragile that when I tried to stitch it, it just ripped apart.  Sad!  Since the Crying Blanket literally exudes warm fuzzies, trashing it is just SO not an option.  Taking the squares off and redoing the entire front would be folly, as we all know about my primitive sewing skills.  Plus, not all the squares needed to be replaced.  So, here’s what I did:

I carefully cut out the squares that were too fragile to be repaired (cringing the whole time, mind you) and replaced them with a bit of an old pair of shorts and an old pair of pajamas. The first set of repairs was in no way subtle, and I couldn’t come up with a way to sew the new squares in without it looking totally obvious, so ultimately I decided to Rock Out with my Obvious Self, and did this:

Totally obvious.  For now it looks a little odd because I only ended up replacing four squares, and now those four have black edging around them and none of the other squares do.  I’m counting on the fact that this blanket is going to be around for many, many years, which means that it’s going to need many, many repairs.  It’s going to be cool to watch the Crying Blanket evolve, I think.  The Crying Blanket (and all warm, fuzzy home-made quilts) is the ultimate upcycling project: I get to replace pieces of our grandparents’ upcycled clothes with pieces of our own upcycled clothes!  I’m channeling Simba from The Lion King now… heh…  It’s the circle of life, upcycle style!  })i({

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