Saturday, July 7, 2007

It Runs In The Family

When I talked about my painting, I said there was a story involved with painting my girls room to be saved for another day. This is the day :)


I had painted their room several years ago, the ceiling lavendar, the walls were also lavendar with a dark purple and a teal sponged on. We did it while my husband was on a hunting trip and I really did most of the work while they helped with odds and ends and kept their younger brother occupied.

Last summer, while Rebekah was on a mission trip, Rachel was wanting to rearrange the furniture in her room. All of her friends were also on the trip, she was too young to go and was bored. I told her we could do that. Then she said "too bad we can't paint." Hmmmm. I thought about that. We considered doing it and started talking about colors.

Ultimately we decided to wait for Rebekah to make sure she also liked the colors and to come up with ideas how to use decorative painting. I told them we could do it, but they'd have to buy the supplies and do the work. My husband was going out of town for a weekend to visit his mom (too expensive a weekend trip for us all to go) so we decided to do it then.

We had made a trip earlier in the week to pick up the paint. They had also done some reorganizing/cleaning out in the room during the week to save time on the weekend. I took my husband to the airport and the car had no sooner cleared our street than the girls were moving the furniture out of their room. When I got back home, they were already priming the walls.


It was a whirlwind weekend. Our town was doing fireworks that Saturday night and we were meeting friends at the park. The painting was actually finished by then, just the decorative painting and moving the furniture back was left.

This isn't the best picture, color wise, but it's close. The orange is less muddy in person and a bright, medium shade of orange. The yellow comes down the wall about a foot, Rebekah freehanded the curve. The speckles are the orange, feather painted on.




The lower part of the walls has some green feather painted on, plus some yellow and orange at the top of the green, the idea being a field of flowers. (The orange is a little more true to color in this picture.)

We had lots of fun with this. We went to the store and bought lace and little flowers to decorate their plain lamps plus flowers to put in the glass base, some orange and yellow flowers and a vase. I found these lone star pieces while looking for fabric that would match in my stash. I had accidentally made extra while making a broken star quilt and I sewed 4 of them together to make this little table cover.


We homeschool and for a few years the kids went to a competition. One of the things Rebekah chose to do was quilt. She already had this quilt made, in fact, we chose colors with this quilt in mind. This quilt is completely hand done, and she did a beautiful job.


I had made the girls purple and white quilts for their beds. Rachels was finished and being used, but Rebekah had already made a quilt with some purple in it and decided she would use that quilt and quilt the top I made herself. It's still in the quilting process, it's what she works on when she feels like quilting but doesn't have something else going.


Rachel needed something new for her bed. Our goal was to be completely finished with the room before my husband got home, so I chose to do this for Rachel. I finished Sunday afternoon and by Sunday night, their room was finished.

All put together with it's little accents, it reminded me of a room you might find in an island resort. They had great fun doing it and kept it a surprise from everyone. They were so excited each time a different friend came over because they got to show off their handiwork and creativity all over again.

It's going to be hot and humid here today, I'm hunkering down for a day of quilting in the a/c. I'm trying my hand at making Jambalaya and am hoping for a relaxing day.

Happy quilting!

2 comments:

~Bren~ said...

That creative gene runs deep. I love Rebekah's quilt, and because I have seen it in person, I can say the picture does not do it justice. I love the quilt you did for Rachel too.

dot said...

I like Rachels quilt. This one of my favorite patterns. I can't believe she did it by hand. Now that is patience. I don't think I could have done it, well completed it anyways. Congrats on the quilt. The painting is very creative.