My Special Boy's Quilt (finished - yippee)

Back in August (!) I started a quilt for the autistic boy that we childminded. (Blogged about here) Things were up in the air for R: mum wasn't able to keep him, and Dad was living in a different borough who didn't have a school place for him, and the foster parents thought he was going, so accepted a new child ... so my boy has been boarding at school all week, and with dad at weekends, while we waited for dad to move back to this borough so he could stay at his special school (following all this?)

Anyway, this quilt was meant to be a goodbye quilt, but he might be coming back to us, so I decided it needed to become a Christmas present, which meant it needed to be finished!





























"Spiral Learning" is a memory boosting technique which is really good for children like R: asking questions and talking about what has happened helps various connection in the brain, so this quilt is all about memories: it includes a motorway sign, the family pets, our names, and favorite activities (counting planes, feeding donkeys, riding a tricycle, spotting bridges, listening to the washing machine etc)

I hope he likes it when we get it to him.

Yesterday we drove to Portsmouth to see my mum: Brian drove and I sewed, and got 80 4 inch squares stitched together in pairs for Trygve's table runner. Today they got ironed (and photographed), so I can get on with them tonight.

















I also got a photo of some of the stack and slash blocks

My Special Boy's Quilt

If there is anyone in blogland reading this, I want to tell you about my Special Boy. I am employed by the borough to provide some respite childminding for a young lad (8 years old) who is autistic. There are other problems in the family too: mum has mental health problems, and she and dad have split up and aren't talking. So R has been coming to us for 6 hours one day at weekends and school holidays. Anyway, he has now been moved away from mum, as she was really having problems coping with parenting, and is with a foster family, possibly being moved to dad at the end of next month.

We will all miss R and his funny ways, even his obsessions. We want him to remember us, so I am making him a very personal I Spy quilt. Some of the fabrics were chosen by him, and the embroideries will hopefully help him with 'spiral learning' - prompts and reminders, together with a nod to some of his obsessions! These include blue Boy (our budgie) and the washing machine (a favourite noise, and we 'read' the words waiting for "suh, puh, ih, nuh" which is the best noise of all)

We also have a pet hedgehog, called Twiglet.

A regular Saturday trip is to my mother-in-law's where there is an old, red trike that Niki taught R how to ride. If anyone mentions nanny Bette he will, without prompting, recite the road numbers (M25, A40 etc) to get to hers, and finish with, breathlessly, "And she's got my red bike hasn't she"




The last two squares for today show our main teaching project of LEFT and RIGHT, and one of the donkeys who live at the village farm: Ruth (who appears in the church Christingle service each year and has been in Eastenders!!!)













(methinks I could have ironed these before I photographed and posted, ooops!)