Day Four Hundred and Forty-Three

I think I can safely say that I have started Item #15 (make a patchwork blanket for each child). This one will be for Boo - the idea was to start it when she was ten and finish it by the time she turned eleven. She had her eleven-and-a-halfth birthday last week, so unless I suddenly discover time travel, it'll be a little late.

She and I settled on a quilt pattern that comes out looking like square-edged puzzle pieces, all fitting together. It makes both of us happy - I like the way it doesn't make me do a whole bunch of curved edges (which would likely result in a blanket that's more three-dimensional than either of us have in mind), and she likes the way it will have a zillion different colors in it.

It has ninety-nine "squares", if you count each puzzle piece as a square. Each color is actually cut out in seven precisely sized rectangles and squares in order to create the final illusion of a solid interlocking puzzle. It is a lot of cutting. I'm OK with that, because part of me doesn't want to finish it too quickly (and with ninety more colors to cut out, I definitely won't be setting any speed records).

I know it just looks like a pile of colored fabric, pinned in stacks of matching pieces, and that's a completely valid way of looking at it. But I see so much more already, and it's not even sewn together yet. She loves all things sparkly and striped and speckled and spangled (I keep thinking of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem "Pied Beauty"), and the piles of fabric saved for this project reflect her tastes over and over.

I look at this pile and see the candy-corn nightgown I made her with Halloween fabric, bought on clearance, in the spring, just for fun.

I see the red dress I made for her first day of the fourth grade, and I wonder how much longer she will tolerate a dress for the first day of school.

I see the camo-and-butterflies cargo pants her exceptionally cool Aunt Boo (Boo's named after my sister) bought and sent in the mail for her sixth birthday.

I see the purple flannel nightgown that I just washed and folded, which she has not yet put away - I probably should remind her.

I see the pale pink and white flowers of one of my favorite-ever Easter dresses - I think it had a little white straw hat with it, when she would still tolerate being put in a hat for Easter Sunday.

The white material with brilliantly-colored fruit takes me back to her pre-school years, from a mix-and-match set of shirts and shorts I made for her. They lasted for years, since she kept getting taller but stayed the same size around. (I'm not kidding. She's eleven, and she can still wear a circle skirt I made for her in the first grade.)

The blue-and-white check with daisies dates back to her toddler years - did I make a matching hat? I remember a hat. It's possible ... Buddy hadn't come along yet, and there was still time then for sewing impossible things like hats.

The navy blue with gold stars takes me back to Boo as her two-year-old self - even then, I realized that this tiny little person was bursting with so much personality that gold stars only hinted at everything inside there, all that energy bouncing around in her little body and mind, flowing and bubbling and sparking out, in words upon words upon words.

They are good memories. We've had some happy times and hard times since then, and there are surely more of each ahead, as there are in any given set of days and months and years. But the memories make me smile, and I have hope - real hope - that this blanket will keep her warm in better days and months and years ahead.