Well, I guess it’s not going to be much of a secret any more.

I sew.

Yes, some people love the dichotomy. Big me with my guns, motorcycles, martial arts, beer, hunting, etc…. and sewing. One of these things is not like the other.

I learned to sew out of necessity, to mend things. As a child I watched my Mom sew things to mend or adjust clothing. I’d often pull out the sewing kit myself just to dink around. As a kid, one Christmas my sisters and I bought our Mom a sewing machine; she never used it, but my sisters and I would always fiddle around with it. Fast-forward to about 5 years ago and I caved in and bought a sewing machine because it was much less painful to sew patches on Scout uniforms with a machine than by hand.

Make no mistake — I am not a seamstress. I do not have mad skillz. I actually think about taking some classes to learn how to sew things like clothing. But for now, I can do some things.

I made a toy pillow and mattress for Daughter’s doll crib a few years ago. We pulled the doors off Daughter’s closet and I fashioned some neat curtains for it. I’ve done a few other things too, tho no clothing because the notion of that intimidates me (at least until I can get more training; man knows his limits).

My latest project: blankets and pillows for my nephews.

A couple years ago Wife’s brother’s wife made some blankets and pillows for our kids that were pretty neat. When thinking about Christmas presents for my sister’s boys, I thought making them blankets and pillows would be neat as well. I asked Sister what colors the boys liked and headed over to Jo-Ann Fabrics. The plan was to make them double-sided blankets, with one side being a “novelty” cloth and the other side being this fuzzy fleece; fun and warm. When Daughter and I got to the store, they didn’t have much of the fuzzy fleece nor did we find much for cloth in the colors and patterns we wanted. We picked what we thought might be good, then I called Sister to ask her what she thought. Snapped a picture of the cloth, sent it to Sister (iPhone love!). I asked her to be honest and she said there was a good chance some of those wouldn’t be well-accepted. Fair enough, that’s why I was asking. While talking on the phone I was staring at a shelf full of camouflage cloth and asked her what the boys would think about that. She said it’d be great and the would love it.

So here we are.

Picked two different camo patterns so they boys could tell their blankets apart. Both fleece.

Originally we wanted to sew a fleece “blaze orange” on the other side of both blankets. Unfortunately with the bolts of orange fleece they had, only one gave us enough to do what we wanted (I wanted 2 yards, the other bolt only had 2 1.5 yard pieces). So we grabbed some of that black fuzzy fleece. Thus one blanket has camo on one side and hunter blaze orange on the other, and the other blanket is camo and the fuzzy fleece.

Jo-Ann’s also had some regular camo cloth, so I picked up a yard of two varieties and some poly-fill and made some very fluffy pillows too. I felt really geeky because I was all excited to find just bolts of Realtree AP. Gosh… now I could sew my own hunting clothing. 😉  In fact, Daughter wants me to make her a t-shirt with the leftover camo cloth; again, clothing intimidates me but who knows… maybe Jo-Ann’s will have a pattern and I can give it a try.

All very soft, very warm. Daughter helped me sew things, did some good product testing, and gave her seal of approval. No they aren’t perfect (there are obvious spots where things aren’t in nice straight lines), but they work and should hold up well. I’m generally pleased with the work and hope my nephews enjoy them.