One day not too long ago, I got a random request from The Bub that the household’s resident dolls, TeeCee and NeeCee, needed a blanket to stay warm.
Realizing this would be a nice excuse for Mama to sew something just for fun, I jumped at the chance to do it right then and there. Hello. Let’s do this!
We dragged out my giant bin of fabric scraps and began sifting through it to find, as my client had requested, “the most colorful pieces.”
See that great orange herringbone fabric in the upper left there? It was a favorite in the selection process but somehow didn’t make the cut when we were actually piecing the whole thing together. And see that yummy yellow sari silk in the lower left? That’s from an old sari of my mom’s. That and some other scraps have been hanging around for donkey’s years, so it was fun to see them being incorporated into this project.
After The Bub made his top choices from the scrap pile, I haphazardly cut them into a bunch of squares, quickly sandwiched them together and sewed them up.
We then double-checked the general sizing, with the help of TeeCee and NeeCee (I’m not quite sure which one is which).
Is it weird that I couldn’t resist the urge to make this more than a simple blanket and actually add batting and quilt it?
Well if so, call me crazy. Yes, it was organic cotton batting to boot, but it was a scrap piece so that surely cancels out the absurdity factor, right? And anyway, everyone knows that dolls deserve five-star treatment when it comes to their bed linens. Um, plus it was good practice for when I actually get around to making a similar quilt for a human. I rest my case.
The Bub was already on the verge of losing interest at this point, so it didn’t help matters that I began obsessively machine-stitching a bunch of straight lines across it (“What are you doing, Mama?”), and then backed it all with a beautiful piece of Japanese cotton robe fabric.
It is a bit wonky overall, but for being one of the speediest projects I’ve done recently, I’m fine with that and actually really like how the whole thing turned out.
And hey, TeeCee and NeeCee like it too. It’s wide enough for both of them to share and keeps ‘em nice and cozy.
Now if they’ll just close their eyes and get a bit of sleep…