A quilt maker

Yuma-kun has started Jr. high school and he isn't getting here as early as he used to.  He used to come at 5:30 or earlier for a 7:00 English class.  That was why we were getting so much cooking and sewing done!  But these days he arrives for English at 7:00 on the dot after riding his bicycle 40 minutes home from school.  He has lots of complaints about jr. high school.  The upper-classmen are bullies, the bicycle ride to and from school is long and dangerous, the club activity is too intense, the English teachers have bad pronunciation. 

I don't know about 'bad' but the Japanese teachers probably have an accent and I think his foreign English teacher is not American so her pronunciation is different from mine.  All I can say is that I AM a foreigner and as far as I know my pronunciation is natural.  That's not to criticize that some other teacher's pronunciation as being wrong, just different and he will have to live with it!  (Yuma-kun was telling ME how I should pronounce things according to his teacher...  "I am the foreigner!!!  I am right!!!)

Anyway, Yuma-kun's quilt lay in my closet not getting finished.  So close and yet still undone!  I had suggested he come during Golden Week but he had club activities.  Yuma-kun arrived on Thursday with no English homework (I don't know why) and so we dumped an hour of English to sew the binding on his quilt.

"I've gotta get this done today.  I want to take it home."

"I don't think we can complete it tonight.  You still have to sew down the binding and Tetsu will be home soon and I've got to get him dinner."

"No!  I've gotta get it done this week!  My teacher is coming for a house visit (teachers once a year visit their students' homes for 30 minutes or so) and I want to show her!"

Well, I can see how he'd be proud to show off his quilt but he's been dragging his feet along this past month and now suddenly he wants to spend the night sewing on his quilt!

"I'll use the sewing machine alone while you feed Tetsu-san dinner."

I made it plain that I couldn't work on it with him that evening and asked him to come over Friday evening (leaving his club activities early.)  And Friday Yuma-kun arrived early to put the finishing touches on his quilt.

Wrestling with that big ol' quilt at the sewing machine.

 "This is too heavy and too big!  I can't do it!"

"You were the one who wanted to make a big quilt.  This is what you have to do to make something big.  The harder it is to do, the more satisfaction you'll get when it is done."

Yuma-kun persevered.

 And DONE!!!

There was a bit of repair work to be done by me (one seam didn't catch the fabrics) and the binding stitching was started and restarted and pushed and pulled so much that it is practically zig-zag.  And Yuma-kun opted to leave the basting stitches on the back of the quilt along the edges instead of picking them all out from under the zig-zag stitches he used to sew on the binding.

What I'm saying is that this will never win any prizes...  Except in Yuma-kun's heart and mine.

 One very proud boy!  Yuma T.  Age 12 years old.  A quilt maker!