Memento.
At not quite 2 years of age, The Scamp has an awesome t-shirt collection, including robots, squirrels, and turntables, all emblems of this Brooklyn boy’s life. I feel a little twinge of sadness every time I cull his closet for outgrown clothes. I’ve been setting aside the most memorable of the t-shirts, though, to make into a quilt.
T-shirt blankets and quilts are popular practical keepsake items; sports and band t-shirts seem to be especially common material. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn to quilt from my grandmother before she died, so I’m going to have to figure out how to put it together myself. There are instructions online, as well as classes in the area for quiltmaking. I suppose if I feel truly at a loss, I could always outsource it, but it feels important to me to attempt to do it myself. I know how special I feel when I curl up in a quilt made by my grandma’s own hands, and I hope The Scamp will feel the same way about his t-shirt quilt, even if he becomes a surly teenager.
Photo above of one of the better t-shirt quilts I’ve seen, by Beverly St. Clair at Genome Quilts. If I were to commission a quilt, it’d likely be by her.