Flashback Friday - circa 1999

Today is the first day of 1st grade for my first child. In honor of him, I present the rug I made 6+ years ago for his nursery.

Back then my knitting machine had it's own room. In fact, this rug is the last thing I made with it...poor thing, displaced by a mere baby! I almost finished the rug in time, too. I had all of the pieces knit and felted, but was still assembling and appliqueing when that bouncing baby boy came into our lives! (Ok, that sort of sounded like I was sewing and giving birth at the same time...that's not what happened)

I remember now that my original rug design was twice this size (What was I thinking???) but due to circumstances had to be edited down. I'm thinking that might explain the somewhat odd assortment of critters that ended up inhabiting the rug. It must've made more sense in the original design...either that or I was so busy riding the roller coaster of pregnancy hormones that my judgment was impaired...

Anywho, The knitting machine uses a punchcard to create 2 color patterns. All of the backgrounds (stars, circles, squiggles) are patterns I designed. The pattern repeat is pretty small and somewhat limiting. The patchwork piecing and applique was done on the sewing machine using a zigzag stitch. There's a little iCord accent near the black and white border that I attached with a whip-stitch.

Today is the first day of 1st grade for my first child.

His room is now occupied by bunk beds and a 4 year old brother. The rug has been long since packed away in favor of Thomas the Train, Batman, Pokemon...etc. There is no nursery, no baby in the house, no place for a rug with goofy animals on it. But I'm ok with that, because every day, like the first day of school, is a new beginning.