Wrapped in Love

Rob's sister passed away a month ago today. It's hard to believe it's already/only been a month.

As part of their grief counseling, it was suggested that each of her young daughters pick out a few items of her clothing to have made into blankets to snuggle with. I was given the honor--truly, I'm honored--to make the blankets. My brother-in-law gave me the shirts a few weeks ago but I was too nervous to make the first cut until this week.


I think they turned out very sweet. All the materials are a tight knit and won't fray so I didn't bother to back or hem it; leaving each shirt at its full cozy softness. I tried to keep necklines and any other identifying details as much as I could. There's something deeply moving about running a finger along the buttons or neckline; so much more than just seeing a series of small squares and remembering a shirt once upon a time that used that fabric.

After stitching each seam I pressed the seam to one side, top-stitched it close to the edge, and trimmed the edge for a relatively polished looking back, but it's still not as pretty as the front.

I read a tutorial (here) for making these little wrapped flowers out of a ribbon or any fabric, really, and decided to use the hems of each non-green shirt to make a few flowers.

The green shirt had a collar on it that was trimmed with a delicate crocheted edge so I cut off each end of that into a triangle and gathered them into a leaf.




That would have been it, but as I was sewing down the last seam my machine was possessed. I blame my sister-in-law. Because after it finished sucking a solid inch or so of fabric into the feed-dogs and I had to completely dismantle the machine to remove it, it ended up with a bite out of it. Here I was thinking I was nearly done.

 Desperate, I grabbed one of the extra sleeves that were too small to make a square from and cut a heart-patch. I lined up the stripes to make it less obvious but let it overlap into the adjacent square to make it somewhat easy to find, too. I thought it turned out beautifully. And, of course, then I added one to the other blanket so both sisters could have a little extra love in their blanket. It gave it the little something extra it needed; thanks Debi.