Two half finished projects

It's snowing today! Yeah! (Because I don't have to go out at all today!) This may be a full sewing day... I have one student scheduled to come this morning but I have a feeling she'll call and say she can't come. She really hates driving in the snow...

Yesterday was a pretty full day of sewing too. I spent time upstairs putting the blocks to the Crazy Goose Chase quilt together into rows. Well, partly put together. If my student doesn't come today putting the rest of the blocks together is on the docket for this morning.

Looking good, looking good. It has much more of a "pink" tint than I expected but with all those maroon pieces in there it shouldn't be surprising. Now the only problem is that this is going to turn into a square quilt and I really wanted a rectangle quilt to give to the Ronald MacDonald House. So even when I'm finished sewing this together I'm going to have to figure out some more blocks to make this longer.

And I got sidetracked with some applique. The pre-school principal where I teach on Mondays asked if I had a pattern for a Girls' Day quilt. (Girls' Day is March 3rd.) She wanted to make a quilt, maybe for the preschool. I have a cute pattern, not very big, so I brought her the book and she jumped at it!

"I want to make that! I don't think I'd be able to get it made by THIS March, but surely by NEXT March I could sew at my own pace and get it finished. If you'll help me."

I'm happy to help her but of course, I've never made the quilt myself. I came home and got started. I had to make one stop at the craft store to see what was available in kimono style prints and found some small cuts (not fat quarters... they don't sell those in Japan.) After making the applique pieces I got started on the sewing.

The FIRST problem is that the girl kimono cloth is made of chirimen crepe rayon. I knew that when I bought the fabric but I figured that since this is going to be a decorative quilt and not get washed, that I could mix fabrics without any problems. True and false. True chirimen is made of silk but that is expensive and the little craft shop didn't have any. Rayon chirimen is lovely and easy to sew BUT when I spray starched it for ironing a sharp edge, the chirimen "shrank"! Well, it scrunched up... That is what rayon chirimen does... So I ironed it out flat again and made applique edges without using starch. So far so good. (I wonder what will happen during the rainy season...)

The boy kimono is made from heavy cotton so it should be okay.

For the picture these are just laid out on the background fabric. The sewing will get done in front of the TV today.

All in all, there is a lot more work to making this than I thought there was going to be and I really wonder if the principal, who is a non-quilter/sewer, is going to be able to do this. Maybe this would be a better collage type project with me offering to do the final machine quilting instead.

We'll see how it goes today.