My Earliest Blankets

I see a lot of improvement in the practice blankets I am making now when compared to my earliest attempts. Back then when I was in elementary school, I had no sewing machine to use or any sewing skills aside from threading a needle and sewing on a button and some rudimentary embroidery skills.

These three blankets are my very first efforts. They're pretty crude, but their sentimental value for me is through the roof! The childhood memories come rushing back just by looking at them.

I stitched them by hand back in the 1960s when I was in fourth or fifth grade. The yellow wire was from clippings left behind by the phone company as they installed new telephone lines in a neighborhood being built by mine. Bobbie, Carol, and I used to scavenge those bits of wire after the workers had left for the day. Pliable and easily cut, we turned them into bits, hooks, hoof picks, and fasteners of all kinds for our stables.

My carpet herd Five Gaiter, Sham, wearing his old victory blanket. 

Underneath Sham's name is my stable symbol from the 1960s. The three of us chose Native American names for them at the time. Bobbie's was Apache Stables, Carol's was Cherokee, and mine was Pawnee Stables. In 1970 when I joined the infant hobby I changed the name to Windsong to reflect the fact that my home was on the Wabash River. One of my favorite things to do was to walk along the river's banks and listen to the sound of the wind rushing through the Cottonwood trees' leaves. I love and connect to that name so much that I have never changed it in all these years of collecting.

As for the other blanket, Apache Joe was a cheap plastic model (I searched online but could not find a photo of him in Google Images) and he was my barrel racer in our backyard shows. That blanket was his award for winning barrel racing multiple times at our pretend Madison Square Gardens. (I smile at the memories as I type.) Bobbie, Carol, and I actually timed our models as we galloped them around Dixie cup "barrels" and across a finish line made from a green Lincoln Log roof piece.

I don't think that the third blanket was ever completed. Still, I hang onto it - those sentimental feelings are so strong. And as for the colors of blue and yellow being the same as Breyer's, the blue fabric was the only scrap large enough found in my mother's store of fabric remnants that could be made into several blankets. The yellow embroidery floss stood out nicely against the blue color and was snazzier than white. (And, I had matching yellow telephone wire to make the closure!) But the coincidence does make me smile.

These three are tucked lovingly in with the much nicer, commercially made Breyer blankets and my practice blankets. They're definitely some of my collection treasures.