Congratulations to the Class of 2009

This is always a special time of the year to me. I love seeing the excitement of someone who has completed their education and is graduating. They have worked hard to get to where they are and it is certainly a milestone worth celebrating. But I always struggle with what to give someone who is graduating.

My stash had some fleece blankets, that I had purchased on a super sale. And I was lucky that the colors match the school colors (red & brown) of a graduate that I wanted to give something to. While trying to decide what to machine embroider on this blanket, I feel I really lucked out.

I found a great "Class of 2009" design on sewforum.com that I was able to put in the center of this fleece blanket. I then came up with the idea of putting something in each corner. But, as this gift was meant as a surprise to the graduate, I was struggling with to put in each corner. The name of the graduate, school, degree, and graduation date were all possibilities. But on my own, I wasn't exactly sure what the official degree title is, and I wondered if I could come up with something more valuable than the "date of graduation", given I had "Class of 2009" in the center.

















Since I use Facebook and had a link to this person's wall on Facebook, I decided to see if I could become a secret friend of one of their college buddies. To my surprise, I was successful on my first try. And a very nice young lady came back with some great suggestions for what to put in each corner, plus helped to verify the correct degree title. But something I would have never thought of, was the name of the dorm that this person lived in for four years.

I have this blanket now ready to give away. While the photos don't do the blanket justice, I wanted to share with you. To clarify, what I machine embroidered on this blanket is: In the center, "Class of 2009", and in each corner I placed Name, degree title, dorm name, and college name.





















If there is anyone out there looking for an idea for creating commercial ME designs, I believe there is a market for more graduation & college related designs. I know I would have bought some if I could have found them when I searched for ideas for this project.