Reading with children is a rather wonderful moment in the evening to nestle under a quilt and quietly unravel the chaos of the day. Of course, we don’t just read stories with children to encourage them to develop literacy skills and understand a beginning, middle and an end.
For us all, but particularly children, stories offer a doorway into other worlds that expand reality, melting it into something new and fantastical. On the flip side of the coin, stories are instrumental in helping children to make sense of the world around them and learning right from wrong (and the grey area in between). Understanding other people’s emotions and the moral conundrums they will have to decipher as they grow.
The cards and book that accompany our bedding sets try to marry those two elements of storytelling together. There's facts about the phenomenon of nature, explanations about what is rapidly changing the world we inhabit and the part as humans we play in this. Then you can let your mind roam the land of stories and possibilities.
Thinking about your favourite book as a child, I feel is really a rather telling indication of the person that you were and the adult you have become. Your passions, fears and dreams are all imprinted on those well thumbed pages. I’ve kept all of my favourite books from childhood and often revisit them for comforting inspiration and a reminder of who I am deep down when I’ve forgotten. It was how I first learnt to cheat, looking at the illustrations to give me clues to the words when I couldn't read. It's almost certainly why I fell in love with illustration and pictures.
For Rebecca and I, the cards and book that accompany our Quilt and Duvet bedding sets are not an appendage to our bedding, they are an instrumental part of Forivor and each collection we design. In fact I approach our worlds like a book rather than a fabric design, hence all the details I draw and narratives left open for children to start imagining their own. That’s also why we continue to offer our collections: rather than seeing them as a seasonal or annual offering, we will continue to publish our signature collections and revisit them to create something new.
And by all means if you are too tired at the end of a long and arduous Monday to read to your children we think that's just fine too and we hear from customers that their babies, toddlers and children often drift off while looking at their Forivor quilt or duvet. That makes us pleased as punch to hear.
Words By Alice Ruby Ross