Maria-sama ga Miteru Volume 31 Chapter 7

After returning to the Rose Mansion, they opened their sewing boxes.

"Ah, I knew I didn't have any large pieces of cloth."

Shimako-san said, after sorting through the cloth in the lower compartment of her sewing box.

Large pieces of cloth generally weren't scraps. To begin with, the amount of cloth used in class was probably carefully calculated so that there wouldn't be too much left over.

The pieces of cloth in their sewing boxes were sized so that they weren't a nuisance - neither too big nor too small. Instead, they were the perfect size for practicing with a sewing machine.

"I thought this lunchbox cover could be good. We could wrap the candies in it too."

Looking at the design in Cosmos Friend, it was a square piece of cloth similar to a handkerchief. There were only four corners to stitch, so it seemed like it should be easy. However, since she'd used the past tense, did that mean that Shimako-san had already dismissed that idea?

"We just don't have a large enough piece of cloth to make a square 30cm a side. We could sew several pieces of cloth together, but that would be a lot more work to make sure it all fit. On the other hand, if we made the square 15cms then it wouldn't cover a lunchbox."

Shimako-san said as she fiddled with two pieces of cloth, one light-blue with a small white floral print, and one plain and cocoa colored.

"Good point."

Yumi spread out her scraps of cloth too. She had a piece left over from the skirt she made that was gray with a white stripe, and another from the blouse that was baby pink.

"Hmmh."

Judging by her sigh, Yoshino-san seemed to be in much the same position, with her yellow polka-dot and olive green pieces of cloth arranged in front of her.

At any rate, they'd all arranged their pieces of cloth and thread on the table. It looked like everyone had chosen to make their skirts and blouses out of 100% cotton, probably because it was easy to work with.

They all had some embroidery thread left over also. Two different colors per person. They'd used it to do needlework on their blouses.

"Yumi-san has red and dark green, Shimako-san has white and moss green, and I have yellow and green."

Yoshino-san then followed it up with a mumbled:

"So we all chose embroidery thread in the color of our rose?"

She smiled as she pointed it out, even though she was included in the embarrassment.

"Because."

Yumi desperately tried to rationalize it.

"We were only allowed to use two colors, and the obvious thing to embroider was a flower, and you can make a rose with only one color, and there was a reference pattern."

Shimako-san tapped Yumi on the shoulder.

"Don't worry about it. I heard Touko-chan made a tight skirt with a large rose print pattern."

"Oh, really?"

A tight skirt with a large rose print pattern.

From memory, they'd made the skirts some time near the beginning of first-year, which meant that Touko had chosen that bold pattern way before she became Yumi's petit soeur. And there's silly little Fukuzawa Yumi being embarrassed by her choice of embroidery thread - as she thought this, the conversation continued on around her.

"We'd probably have just enough to make a book jacket."

"Does candy really go with a book jacket? It'd seem kind of strange, don't you think?"

"I think you're right."

Shimako-san and Yoshino-san discussed amongst themselves. Belatedly, Yumi joined in with:

"So then a bookmark would seem out of place too."

"Yeah. Even though they're so easy to make."

Neither a book jacket nor a bookmark were as good as a lunchbox cover. It seemed to be a problem of compatibility with the candy. However, the book cover and bookmark were extremely compatible with each other.

"Okay, so we want something that can be used as both a wrapping and something else."

Yumi said, in a flash of inspiration. The lunchbox cover could have been used to wrap the candy. In contrast, the candy would fall out of a book cover, and a bookmark wouldn't work as a wrapping at all.

"Well, how about this?"

Shimako-san opened the issue of Cosmos Friend to the hand-made corner and pointed at a pouch.

"But the width is 20cm, and we don't have enough cloth for that."

They had enough material for the length, but there pieces were only 17cm wide at most.

"Then what if we did this."

Shimako-san sketched out a blueprint with modified length and breadth sizes on the back of a scrap piece of paper. It was easy to visualize because she'd used a ruler to make it life-size.

"With this, the candy should just fit inside, right?"

After fetching one of the candy boxes and lining them up, Yumi was amazed. It fit perfectly, like it was made for that purpose. Once again, Shimako-san was brilliant.

Shimako-san cut around the edges of the blueprint, making a pattern.

"With this, we'll have about a one centimeter margin for the seam on each side - on the open side we can fold the seam down, run a cord through it and then use our embroidery thread to fix the seam into place.

"What should we use for the cord?"

"Don't we have some ribbons?"

"Oh - !"

That was a good idea, so they high-fived each other.

Yumi enjoyed her time with her onee-sama and petit soeur, but this kind of energetic interchange with like-minded people her own age was fun too.