Blanket No.20 - it's raining Teddies! Up for auction!

This blanket is very special to me because it's the first time I did the backing all by myself and it took me a good three days to complete the backing alone!

Auction Rules:

1. Please check the latest comment for the latest bid before putting in yours.

2. All bids are placed as comments on this blogpost. All comments will be published instantly in chronological order. 

3. The auction ends at 5pm, on Monday, 13th January 2014. 

Note: Please monitor this post near closing time if you want to ensure that you are the highest bidder.

100% of the winning bid will be channeled to our Fund for the animals.

Do we hear RM150?

The bids as they come in:

13th Jan:

At 4.48pm, TeddyBear bids RM468.

At 1.15pm, Emily bids RM368.

12th Jan:

At 7.20pm, TeddyBear bids RM300.

At 6.38pm, Alida bids RM200.

It's raining teddies!

This is a two-layered cotton patchwork without padding in between.

It measures 45 inches by 71 inches.

The making:

Sewing the top was the easy part. It only took me a few hours.

There...done!

But the backing was....hard work, for someone who has never done it before.

This is also the first blanket using the backing cloth contributed by Agnes Cheong and Gerley Kong. This cloth's thread count is high, so the blanket provides adequate warmth and the bonus is that it's light, soft and easy to wash and dry as it is not thick. Good for our Malaysian weather.

Just to digress a little about cloth and thread count, we have two pieces of cloth, supposed meant as curtains, bought from Sarawak. I think it is hand-woven and the thread count is very high, it is extremely thin, soft and as light as feather, but when used as a blanket, it provides more warmth than the normal thick blankets. That's because of the thread count, I think. So, these two pieces never got to grace any window. We use them as blankets! They keep us really warm even on the coldest thunderstorm nights.

Back to the Teddy Blankie story...

I started with having absolutely no idea how to do the backing, but I thought common sense should be able to get me through. How hard can it be?

Er..very hard.

One needs a good understanding of cloth. When the pieces are large, they run after it's been sewn by machine, no matter how accurately you measure, even with the best rulers. You think you've cut a rectangular piece? But by the time it's sewn, it's become a trapezium! So, this calls for hand-tacking every line and sewing from the middle outwards. I would have preferred to hand-sew the whole backing, actually. One has better control of the cloth when one is hand-sewing.

Now I know why it takes so long to do the backing, especially with soft and fine material such as this.

Luckily Ginger helped and accompanied me throughout the three-day marathon of working non-stop, of unpicking and resewing and doing the math, and more math to get it right.

Three full days to do the backing and top-stitching, ensuring there were no pockets and unpicking and resewing if there were any. When I work on something challenging, I don't need to eat or sleep...ha ha. Well, maybe a little of each would be enough to sustain me through.

And the final touch was the binding.

QC was done by my mum. She says it was okay; green light to go for auction.

 Will this Teddy Blankie be yours?

Happy Bidding!!