Happy Village projects

I am getting no farther on my Bargello. I got waylaid with a few other projects...

Most of my English classes have four of five children in a class. I have a couple with three children and one right now with only two children. Right.. I TOLD the parents I would only teach a class if I had four children, but it starts out that way and then someone quits. I always get to feeling that I shouldn't cancel a class just because the ones who DIDN'T want to continue are no longer there and the class has only children who DO want to continue albeit a small class. So I end up with classes of two or three. (Bad business move, but I'm not in it for the business....)

But when one of the three or the two can't come then what...? The kids know me as a sucker. In one class I only had two students last week. In another class only ONE student.

"Tanya-sensei, there are only two of us today. If we continue in the book then ****-chan will get left behind. Let's sew."

And you know me! I'd rather sew than teach English! But I don't have that many projects that can be whipped out in minutes for a sudden change of schedule. The one project that has proven to be great fun and a quickie is Happy Villages.

The REAL Happy Village project calls for collecting 10 solid fabrics and cutting them into shapes according to directions. Tiers... blocks... stair step cuts. But I didn't have the time to do that with the children.

"Here is my basket of scraps. Choose what you like and start cutting them into squares and rectangles. Now glue them on this batting (from my leftover box). Now start cutting triangles. And here is some yellow. Make lots of little squares for windows."

For no preparation and the children having no idea of what they were doing we got a couple nice little Happy Villages. A smaller size than what the book recommends but big enough for a quick hours class.

The work for me though is to freehand quilt these before the next class. That's what I was doing yesterday and what I'll have to do this afternoon.

After quilting I sewed the collage onto black felt and hid the raw-edges with yarn. This would really be another sewing class for the children to do themselves... but I'm SUPPOSED to be teaching English. I can't use up another class for sewing!