One Last Laundry

Dearest Rachel –

They’ve been sitting around in the folks’ basement, and I’ve been meaning to do something about it them for some time. But every time I think about it, I’m away from my computer, and by the time I come back to the computer, it’s completely slipped my mind all over again. But I’ve finally managed to get the timing right, and remembered to look up possible vendors who can make quilts out of T-shirts when I’m actually in a place where I can look up that sort of thing.

And it turns out to be a little bit more complicated than I thought it might.

Most places simply take the design on the front, and make a series of squares out of them, which they then assemble into a quilt, or a blanket or even a pillowcase. Pretty standard stuff, and nothing too objectionable. However, some of the designs on your shirts are of varying sizes, and a one size fits all approach doesn’t quite do them justice. So, when I found a company that takes a more artistic, collage-style approach, I concluded that this would be something more to your liking (even if you’d never see the end result)

I think they refer to this as ‘stained-glass’ style, and while the added complexity doubles the cost of the finished product, I’m going to say the the effect looks to be worth it. When you come down to it, none of the options are particularly cheap, so one might as well splash out and get a truly unique, quality product. It’s not as if it’ll break the bank, after all.

At least not until I go through the entire lot of shirts you left behind. And that won’t happen until I’ve commissioned three or four of these.

For now, I’m just working on one; the one having to do with all of the fandoms you had – we had. This includes all those sponsorship T-shirts from the anime conventions we’ve attended (along with various shirts purchased while at those conventions), merch from various YouTubers over the past few years, and all the My Little Pony and Doctor Who (including crossovers between the two) paraphernalia you’d accumulated over the years. If I read it right from the company’s website, you had enough shirts from just those categories to build an entire queen-size quilt. Imagine what we could do with the souvenirs from your – our – various travels, not to mention the ones you bought to express your faith.

But, one step at a time. In order to get these assembled and shipped off, they need to be washed, and they need to be labeled.

On that particular subject, I wound up leaving out a couple of shirts. Not because they didn’t fit in the box, but because they were of the same image, and I concluded that there was no point in duplicating graphics simply because you had two in your collection. You see, you’d enjoyed the original so much – and wore it so often – that the image had started to fade. So, I’d gotten a new one for you for Christmas to replace the faded one (although, knowing you, you’d just continue to wear the old one as well for more grubby activities, I suppose). It’s entirely possible that the wash I just put it through, like with the Rebecca Parham shirt above, was both its first and last laundry, having never been actually worn.

They didn’t all turn out perfectly; there were a couple of the iron-on MLP designs that were already somewhat faded that didn’t take very well to the wash, I’m afraid. At least this is the last time they’ll have to go through it, I think. We’ll see how it all turns out in about a month or two.

For now, I have to figure out how to seal it, and send it on to the quilting company. Since I’m already taking some of your ashes to the local FedEx outlet, I might as well do the same with this box as well.

As it turns out, they have tape here at the FedEx place; it’s all part of the service, since I’m already paying to get all this shipped. Even nicer, since the company is only a couple of states over in Michigan (as opposed to your ashes, which need to be shipped to the middle of Texas), the clerk informs me that they’ll arrive some time tomorrow afternoon – all for a price that’s just a few cents less than I pay for lunch? dinner? for Daniel and myself a few minutes later.

So, it’s been a surprisingly productive day today. It will be interesting to see what gets accomplished with everything I’m sending out today. Hope you’ll like how it all turns out; and maybe we’ll be able to see a few more like this one as time goes on.

Until then, honey, keep an eye out for me, and wish me luck; I’m probably still going to need it.