Personalizing Luggage

I learned a new word today, scutelliphily, it is the practice of collecting patches. I've been doing that since my daughters were little, but I had no idea there was a special name for it. The word comes from the Latin "scutellus" meaning "little shield".

I have been collecting patches from places we have gone on our travels, as a way of personalizing our luggage. The girls each have large canvas backpacks covered in souvenir patches, and Blaze and I each have a suitcase. Blaze's suitcase, however, was not new when we got it (someone in Kansas City was throwing it away, when I found it on their curb and brought it home for Blaze) and the zipper recently stopped working. It was time for Blaze to get a new suitcase.

He was very insistent that the new suitcase had to be black, because that was the color of the old one ( I have mentioned his desire to maintain the status quo, haven't I? ).



Even though the patches we've collected over the years are the kind that are supposed to be ironed on, I've never applied them that way. I've always sewn the patches on, which meant that now, all I had to do was use a seam ripper to remove the patches from the old suitcase. I have spent the last three days sewing the old patches, and a few new ones, onto the new suitcase.





Ready for our next adventure!