Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Wool Quilt

Last week I cut all my wool scraps into big chunky 6" squares and sewed them all together for a quilt top for David.

He is heading out to Shiloh in early spring with his commanding officer, Major Ron. They will share a small tent and take the barest of necessities. I am worried about his being warm enough so I thought a wool quilt would help me use up my scraps and help David stay cozy during the frosty spring nights. Of course, now that he will have a heavy wool quilt to tote along the weather will be warm and lovely and he won't have need of it! Don't things always work out that way?

Beyond the mindless stitching of endless straight seams, I have been taking a break from sewing anything complicated. So far this week I have been working on arranging the boys bedroom for winter, since any painting that had to be done had to be done while it was warm enough to air the room out with the windows open. This past weekend was perfect for that, so I did my painting then. (Note: I really must paint the BACK of their bedroom door! Didn't notice that scrawl mark on the door til looking at this photo!)

I touched up the green paint on the walls, which had suffered severely from kicks from six little feet, often shod in heavy winter boots (are my boys the only boys who like to wear winter boots all year round?) and also from artistic endeavors rendered directly onto the walls with crayons, permanent markers stolen craftily from the desk in the office, chalk and ball point pens. The ball point pen marks were the worst to cover up. Ugh. Those marks show through ANYTHING! I was lucky to find a little can of matching paint in the basement so all those marks are now covered up, the holes have been filled and painted over and everything looks neat and fresh once more.

The older two boys have shared a bunkbed the past year and a half. David, who slept on the top, recently peeled paint and plaster off the ceiling. It looked very bad and dust kept sifting down from the spot he ruined. I had to paint the ceiling but lacked proper paint for that and as I currently have no extra money to buy new paint, I decided to use the leftover blue paint from our kitchen. The ceiling was duly painted. The boys craved white clouds, so I used some leftover cabinet paint to brush on some white fluffy clouds. I was afraid it would look cartoonish but in all honesty, I am pretty happy with how it came out! It gives the room a very airy, serene feel. And yes, that is a dinosaur hanging helplessly from the pull cord on their fan.

The bunk beds came apart, due to the aforementioned reason of the damaged ceiling, as well as the fact the boys have recently been enjoying wrestling matches on the top bunk and using their bed as a fortress out of which they reenact the battle of Helms Deep from Lord of the Rings. Too many times Malachi was a casualty on the Orc side of things and fell from his position of nearly scaling the fortress onto the unforgiving carpeted surface below him. David and Judah now have, what they term, "regular beds".

It was hard to fit three twin size beds into a modest sized bedroom. We have four bedrooms all together but the boys refused any notion of putting one or two of them into a different room. I had to remove their dresser to make everything fit, but now it all works very nicely, I think. David has been enjoying his bed by the sunny southern windows. Here he is reading his science book for school this year, from Sonlight Pre-K 4/5. He adores it!

The boys have grand ideas of having various airplanes and birds hang from the ceiling. I haven't got around to doing that yet,  but we did make a quilted sun yesterday to hang in the east corner of their room. They sorted through my scraps to find several fabrics in orange, yellow and red and they helped me sew it all together.

More floor space is taken up now, but the room actually seems bigger and brighter without the high heavy bunkbed in their, which inevitably blocked a window or two.

Next up - getting more coffee to warm me up on this chilly morning!

Love,
Sarah

5 comments:

  1. The quilt top and the room looks great! I love that they want to sleep together. I think siblings should share rooms. They'll be apart soon enough anyhow. It prepares them for life later on, those college days when they have to share a dorm room, or have to share an apartment when they move on. I think kids that have never had to share a 'space' are at a disadvantage when they're older, faced with the reality of suddenly having to do just that...and generally with a stranger.

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  2. I think it looks lovely! I like the colour on the walls, and the clouds turned out much, much better than I'd have thought had someone told me about it.

    And you can never have to many quilts :)

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  3. We have a wool quilt very similar to yours that my husband's great-grandmother made. It's so nice and warm in the cold months!
    That sun is just perfect, I might have to steal your idea for my lil guy's room!

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  4. I really like how the ceiling turned out. The clouds look surprisingly good. I wouldn't have believed it was possible to make them look that good if I didn't see it with my own eyes.

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  5. The clouds are wonderful, the new wool quilt is divine, and so are the ones already on the boys' beds! I think it is wonderful your boys want to remain together - that is the sweetest thing.

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Thank you for your lovely thoughts!