The Comforter Saga

While I am on the topic of decorating my house, let me tell you about the comforter saga.

I don’t think it’s quite as compelling as the television saga, but it has better visuals. Which is to say any visuals.

Before we got married in November of 2006 (remember, remember, the 5th of November), we ordered a king size bed. We lived in a 500 square foot apartment, which means we were going to devote about 47% of our floor space to the bed, but I wanted a new bed to start my marriage and dammit, if we were going to buy one, we might as well get what I really wanted. Basically, enough room to sleep without C-Man touching me. I’m romantic that way.

I don’t even know how they got the dang thing into the apartment, let alone the bedroom, because we were on our honeymoon when it was delivered. (Thanks for helping, Kate!) If we had known we were going to move into a house eight weeks later, we might have delayed that purchase.

Either right before or right after the wedding, I got the brilliant idea that I would make a king size scrap quilt for the bed. Because I worked with the Legislature and it was about to start its biennial session which we were currently preparing for, so I would have a ton of free time. We threw a couple of almost big enough blankets over the top and I started cutting out fabric.

Into 2 inch by 3.5 inch rectangles. To make a king size quilt.

I was still cutting by the time we moved into the house. Twelve days after we moved, right about the beginning of February, I started to feel sick. Really sick. Oh hey, pregnant. And then I spent the next five and a half months nauseated 24 hours a day. And the Legislative session was going on. When I finally wasn’t too sick to do anything but work and curl up in bed and want to die, I asked C-Man whether he wanted to help me work on the quilt. If he worked with me and we picked which rectangles went in which blocks, it would go fast, and it would be a team effort awwwww, and it would be fun.

It was not fun. It was not fun in a way that involved a near-fight and C-Man breathing really deeply and finally getting a beer in order to calm down. In case you are a quilter, I will insert the phrases “trying to make a scrap quilt look like a batik quilt in the book” and “thinking really hard about which pieces go in which block” and you will see that this man had just missed the concept.

We decided I would abandon that quilt and make one with reeeeallllly big pieces. Before the baby came. We went to the quilt store, picked out fabrics, and that went really well. I cut the blocks, and we laid them out on the bed, then agreed on the layout. I sewed them into rows, then we decided to cut some of those rows apart to make the design a little more interesting. We agreed on the layout again.

When my ankles were the size of my calves, I gave up and quickly sewed closed the holes in a queen size comforter that friends had given us when they married and consolidated households. The holes were from when their dogs tried to eat it. I used embroidery floss that almost matched. I just wanted the inside fluffy stuff not to leak out. Then I put the blood pressure monitor cuff back on.

We did not freeze to death that winter.

Whenever we would go to stores like Bed Bath and Beyond, I would check out their selection. I wasn’t trying to be picky, but I wanted something I could enjoy until the quilts finally got done someday when Boy Detective went off to college. I looked online for organic cotton options, and again struck out. I already had a plain green one on the bed. I wanted something with a design. As I got more and more tired of the dog-chewed holes etc. I really, really wanted something new.

Green Your Decor, as I have previously mentioned, is one of my favorite blogs. Jennae is awesome, she is just as lovely in person as you would expect from reading her blog, and she does these cool little design boards from time to time. Green Decorating in Shades of Blue was one such design board, and it included this image:

Duvet cover. Bingo. It was not my dream, but it was organic cotton and on sale and blue. Ordered it that night.

Now what to put in it? Feeling a little silly about not thinking this through.

Want to spend $350? Buy an organic cotton king size comforter. Already spent quite a lot on the duvet cover and shams.

Cheap trumped eco, I’m sad to say, and I went to Overstock.com to buy the cheapest 100% cotton comforter I could find. This one.

It had two things going for it: 100% cotton, and f!&king hilarious.

Sadly, when it arrived, I discovered it was not 100% cotton as advertised. I draw the line at sleeping under polyester, and it must go back.

Punishment for my attempt to evade environmental responsibility? You tell me.