I was thinking about blankets the other day. I started quilting about 6 years ago. The obsession comes in fits and spurts. I'll get out my sewing machine, which my mother bought for my 17 year old daughter when she was about 9 years old, and I'll convert the entire kitchen, den, and dining room into my sewing room. My family rolls their eyes at me and tolerates the yards of fabric draped over every chair and table and looks beyond the tumbleweeds of thread that collect in the corners of the room. Blanket season usually happens for about 2-4 months every year around Christmas time. No one knows who will become a lucky recipient of one of these treasures. I usually get a bemused, "Thank you?" as a response to my gesture of love. And that is exactly what it is. It's like when a cat brings you a dead bird. Or you go on vacation and your dog leaves a turd in your closet when you return home. It's my offering to you and if you get one, you'd better damn-well appreciate it. I have a running list in my head of those who are blanket-worthy. Before I lay my head down in the hard, cold ground or my ashes are scattered to the wind, I have a few dozen more people for whom I need to cut and piece and stitch together a blanket of love.
The reason I was thinking about blankets is I have been spending more of my waking hours online (said no one ever during the global pandemic). The weekly update that Apple sends me to tell me how many hours/day I've clocked on my phone is obscene. If my 17, 19 and 20 year-old children could go back to their middle-school selves they'd have a fine time screaming, "HYPOCRITE!" and casting stones at me. I have joined more Facebook groups than a high-school senior applying to college has activities listed on their resume. There isn't an obscure Facebook group that I'm not a fan of, and that includes quite a few groups that are dedicated to quilting and sewing. I could never actually post anything on any of these quilting and sewing pages because all the other members are legitimate in their craft. My stuff usually comes out looking like those Pinterest fails. The other day one lady posted a picture of a lovely blanket she was creating for her grandchildren and her evil daughter-in-law told her that none of the 12 grandkids would appreciate the gesture. They'd rather have some plastic crap. She wanted to know if she should just quit or forge ahead. I was horrified. At 3 am in the morning, I wanted to transport through the blue screen and find that insensitive wench and tell her she wasn't worthy of her mother-in-law's time or talents. Of course every single person on the thread told the grandmother she absolutely must make those blankets for all 12 of her grandchildren, DIL be damned! Her grand babies would absolutely treasure her gifts, if not now, then in decades to come. I still shake in indignity at the thought of rejecting such a self-sacrificial gift.
But it got me to thinking about blankets and blanket making in-general. You can go to Marshall's or Ross and buy a throw for about $9. If you and all your friends went to every TJ Maxx-esque store in your city and cleared the shelves of blankets and throws and distributed them throughout your city, you'd go back to the store the next day and there would be just as many. They are mass produced and multiply, seemingly, like tribbles. You can also dish out $50-$100 for some nice, soft name brand blanket. My point being, there is no shortage of blankets; Tuesday Morning, Wal-Mart, Costco, Krogers, Neiman Marcus; you can get them anywhere. We have baskets of them in our TV room and about 5 or 6 are usually strewn about our Ikea Kivik sectional (the poor man's answer to Restoration Hardware's Cloud). But I can look at every blanket and tell you where it came from more or less and can rank each one in terms of sentimentality. When we are all home, we each have our favorite blanket and we fight over them. When we aren't home, the dogs will get on the sofas and leave behind the evidence of their badness with their fur and stink all over the blankets. Sometimes we'll catch our miniature schnauzer trying to make a nest in one that has fallen on the floor. Blankets tell stories. You just have to listen.
Think about it; the moment you exit your mother's womb, what are you wrapped in? A blanket. It's security. It's love. It's warmth. It's family. It's history. Admittedly, I am a hoarder. I hoard photos, my kids' art from pre-school, memories. And I hoard blankets. My grandmothers made me crocheted blankets. My mom's mom, Abuelita Fina, made each of her 20 grandchildren a crocheted blanket and no one got to pick their yarn or their pattern, but we ALL eagerly anticipated the arrival of our blanket. I think she used the yarn leftover at the bottom of her closet and randomly and blindly selected your colors, but it didn't matter. It was the blanket Fina, with her gnarled, arthritic hands, created just for you. Mine is salmon-pink and brown, kind of Baskin-Robbins colored and absolutely putrid in color but it's one of my most valued possessions. Some of the squares are fraying and despite the fact that I could NEVER match the colors, I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to patch it together. But, I get out that blanket (which has been stored away in the ottoman of the Kivik for safe-keeping) and years of summers at her house playing Loteria and watching Trapper John MD come flooding back into my mind. Some of my cousins got colors that I envied, beautiful blues or reds or purples but I would have never, ever, ever even contemplated trading or grousing. My brown and salmon blanket is mine and only mine and no one will ever have one exactly like it. It's like a snowflake.
My dad's mother, Grandma Dorothy, made each of my children, her great-grandchildren, a crocheted baby blanket. If you don't think I don't get choked up thinking about my, at the time, 80 something year-old grandmother, e-mailing me to ask me about colors for the blankets then you have no soul. She'd have turned 103 this year if she were still alive and if there is one thing that Dot loved, it was how to be technologically savvy. She'd have been texting and sending emojis and memes with the best of them. Those blankets she crocheted for her 3 great-grandchildren were love in action. And they are in a box of baby treasures for each of my kids. Gramma Dorothy also taught me how to knit, not well, but it wasn't for her lack of trying. It was 1996 and my husband and I had just returned home from our honeymoon in Cozumel and while were were scuba-diving she was having by-pass surgery, unbeknownst to me. She had come to our wedding and apparently was having crushing sub-sternal chest pressure while on the dance floor but didn't want to bother anyone. When she returned home after the wedding, she walked over to the fire station to tell them her symptoms and ended up with 3 by-passed arteries around her heart. I flew up to take care of her my second week into marriage. Part of her cardiac rehab was walking slowly through Wal-Mart, using a shopping cart to brace herself, to pick out yarn and knitting needles. We'd sit on her sofa (she called it a davenport) and she'd patiently teach me how to knit and purl. I've never gotten beyond a scarf (and one with all sorts of dropped stitches and imperfections at that) but when I was going through chemotherapy, I'd get out my balls of yarn (GD taught me to unravel the skeins and form them into balls) and knit my anxiety into a scarf and have a moment of gratitude for Gramma Dorothy and that week in October 1996.
My Aunt Mary Beth also knits and sews and crochets. I keep promising myself that someday I'll take a week and sit at her feet and take a master class from her. She made 100s, if not 1000s, of blankets and I've been fortunate to have been gifted not only blankets, but knitted Christmas stocking for my kids and cross-stitched wall-hangings and I treasure it all. Because a blanket or any hand-made gift is a gift from the heart. It says, "I have spent sustained time designing and creating and crafting this gift just for you. Countless hours have been spent with the sole purpose of giving you this blanket. Each stitch, each square, each color has significance and meaning and it has been a f$cking labor of love. This is my heart, to you, in cloth. I might not be able to buy you a Tesla, but I can give you this shitty blanket. Now love me!" And it doesn't have to be a blanket. Mine and Lee's dads are both carpenters. Our house is filled with furniture and jewelry boxes and wood-turned bowls and ornaments and chairs made by them. I can't even. I can't even finish my sentence. LOVE, people. LOVE. So, @Kelly with the Beginning Quilters Group (names and relationships changed for anonymity), you GO! Don't you listen to the haters and the doubters and the naysayers. You quilt because you love. Your heart is big and you spread your joy one square at a time.
