for the monkeys

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[Thanks to all of you who entered the Sew Retro Give-away! We have a winner: Caryn who commented: "Oh this book has my name written all over it :) If I don't win it here I will definitely be buying a copy asap! My fav clothes decade has to be the 50's, also like many things about the 70's as well (just not the polyester!)!" Congratulations Caryn! I loved reading everyones comments about your favorite decades in fashion. Fascinating! Thank you for sharing!]

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I spent a fair amount of time in my boys' room this weekend going through outgrown clothes, organizing, and trying to make their room as livable as possible. Those little monkeys of mine, now 8 and 10, are not so little any more. Fortunately, they still love the same things (as long as they are Legos) and enjoy sharing a room. They also share a funny quirk about not sleeping with a top sheet. So awhile back when I wanted some curtains for their windows, I made some with their unused top sheets. Pretty simple: Use the top hem of the sheet as a casing and slide a curtain rod through it! I had to shorten and hem the bottom of the sheet to fit the window.

The sheet I used for this curtain was a Nick and Nora flannel sock monkey sheet. I hung onto the leftover piece (16" x about 40") thinking the print was too cute not to save for something. Well, this weekend I figure out the "something"!

My boys sleep in bunk beds. Youngest sleeps on the bottom. His stuffed animals are suspended above his bed by a hammock (square of fabric with twill tape ties stitched to each corner) tied to the slats on the underside of the top bunk. Perfect. Oldest, on the top bunk, has no such place to stash his stuffed animals. In addition to getting a little old for his plush friends, his growing body needs more space up there! Not wanting his bed to be completely devoid of fuzzy friends, I knew I needed to think of something. (This age is so sweet and funny, isn't it? So much internal growth during those early double digits. Lingering between little kid and big kid...)

So I came up with an idea to make a long row of pockets that would hang from the railing on the top bunk. That way he could stash just a few stuffed animals in the pockets, as well as a book or magazine or two, and a flashlight for reading in bed. (The rest of the stuffed menagerie has found a home in the closet for now.) I retrieved the leftover sheet piece from my stash, hemmed the raw edge, then folded it lengthwise. Then I stitched the short ends along with a few vertical rows of stitching to segment the length into 5-6 pockets. Next I stitched twill tape ties at intervals along the top edge to tie around the top bar of the railing. Viola!

Last night he tried it out for the first time. I think he thought it was pretty cool. He had much more room to spread out yet still had a few favorite things close at hand. When you share a room with your brother, you need to have your own special space with your own special stuff. Y'know?