I didn't photograph it when I made it, but photo evidence points to this bedspread having been made around 2014. This photo was taken in 2019, when I was preparing to make a replacement because one of the fabrics--visible just behind Chip--was falling apart.
I then put the blanket and matching pillowcases in the linen closet, to be ignored.
I had the thought the other day that I could cut up the intact parts of the blanket to use to make another pullover dress...but...that didn't quite feel right.
So!
I ended up picking apart the damaged squares (a second one had started falling apart while in storage), removing the borders, and re-assembling everything into a new configuration.
It might go back into the linen closet, but at least it'll go in in better shape than it came out.
Before I go on, I want to state for the record that my favorite camera lens has stopped working (I looked it up, it's nearly 30 years old), and the other lens I have for that DSLR is too long to work well inside, so I'm using an older, slower, lower pixel count point & shoot camera until I decide what to do about the broken lens. Basically, the old camera has lackluster performance in low light, but I didn't want to wait for a sunny day to take these photos, so they're...not great. Anyway.
The two squares I replaced are shown here, the dark brown floral and the wax print with hearts.
I actually had to do a lot of piecing on the brown square, but I feel like that fits the overall aesthetic of this blanket as much as the brown print with little blue flowers itself does. I used up almost all of that fabric I had, but I had considerably more of the wax print--enough, in fact, that I could use some of it for the extra (and replacement) strips needed to fill in the border and pillowcase parts, now used for the back.
I originally thought I'd just re-use the original back fabric as-is (including that contrast square in the center, which was always there), until I realized that the angles on the ends--originally cut that way to keep corners from dragging on the floor--could be butted up to each other to make miters.
Then I could use the original backing to fill in the center.
The original configuration had the border only on three sides, with the top ends flat. I cut off the corners of those top edges, to add to the ends of the fourth strip'o'strips I'd have to make to put everything together the way I wanted.
I took the pillows apart, to use their strip stripes (I really don't know how to refer to those) for that fourth side. There was another disintegrated fabric to replace, which I did with some more of the wax print. I then needed about six more strips.
I got another from the wax print, and some more from the embroidered fabric at the edges of the pillows (carefully avoiding most of the embroidery.) I knew I had more of the large brown floral, because I'd used some of it to edit a dress a few months ago (the main fabric of the dress also appears in this patchwork, but I have no more of it.) I finally remembered that I had some more of the blue with large white flower fabric--in fact, when I got it out, there were still strips left over from when I made the blanket.
I have the vague idea that the center back fabric will never really be seen, but the edges can fold over to make a nice contrast with the front. Maybe.
Of course, I had a lot of trepidation here, wondering if more of these fabrics might start falling apart. I also kept finding damage--some of it I left (stray holes from where the top edge was originally always folded) and some I patched, although most with very much not matching fabric. Visible here are the two edges patched with ever so vaguely similar fabrics--one at least gets points for being the same as the brown replacement square on the front--and somewhere is one of the red strips with the end replaced by a bit taken from the pillowcase ends.
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