Baby Boy Bento Box: A Finish

Oh look, I have emerged out from under my pile of house renovation madness, motherly duties, 9-5 obligations, and agility craziness to write a blog post. I thought it might never happen!

So what's new with me? For one, as you know, I have a cute little, ever demanding, growing, always doing something new, baby. He's awesome. Until it's 3 am and he won't go back to sleep, then, not so awesome. But really it isn't the baby that has kept me from sewing. It's my lack of sewing machine.

A Water-Logged Saga

A few days after we brought the Tater Tot home, a fitting on our new fridge failed and caused a flood in our kitchen and dining room. Buddy got everything fixed up, but a few hours later, it happened again. After consulting the insurance company, etc., we learned that our dining room floor was going to need to be replaced and the hardwoods needed to be refinished, wait for it, IN THE WHOLE HOUSE!

The nursery was the only place left I could lay the blocks out.
My fuzzy phone photo was necessary to make sure I sewed it together as intended!

Before any of that could commence, they needed to get the floor as dry as possible, which meant moving everything out of the dining room, aka my sewing room. So after being downsized from the extra bedroom (now Tate's nursery) to the dining room, I was being downsized again. All I was left with was the dining room table, stuffed in a corner of the living room. Did I let that stop me? No!



What did stop me was living in a hotel for two weeks and then basically having to move back in to our own house. With a baby, agility classes two nights a week, competing on most weekends, not to mention, my new super early bed time, the unpacking has been very slow. Plus, I promised Buddy that I would put away my clothes before I unpacked my sewing stuff. Silly me.

What's a Girl To Do?

Get out a needle and thread, of course. I had decided that I wanted to hand sew the binding on my Bento Box quilt. I thought it would be a good project to keep me busy while we lived at the hotel, but I just didn't feel like it.

It had been sitting on the back of the couch and finally, one day, I just picked up and starting sewing. It didn't take too long to get it done and I was helped along with  a quiet few hours while both Buddy and the baby napped.

Quilting and the Like

I knew that I wanted to keep the quilting somewhat simple, no plans to tackle FMQ here. However, I didn't want to just to straight lines either. I decided to do a zig-zag pattern, using the squares as my guide. Hooray! No marking. Shortly after starting, I regretted it. There was A LOT of stopping and turning the quilt. I didn't have to push it all the way through the machine, but the process was SSLLOOWW. Since there was no turning back, I forged on.

It is difficult to quilt with the table butted up against the wall, but I made it work!

I love how this quilt turned out. Especially since it was a quilt that was never really meant to be. Originally, I was going to make a small stroller sized quilt with the scraps from my nursery sewing. I realized the backing I was planning on using was too small. So I was going to use a piece of fabric originally bought for the back of the Bizzy Kid Quilt. Then I decided on the Bento Box pattern and THAT was too small AND I didn't have enough scraps. Fabric Depot always seems to benefit from my poorly laid quilting plans! I am so glad that I saw the vision through. This quilt has that scrappy but modern vibe that I love!

It is listed for sale in my Etsy shop. And now, a gratuitous number of photos. It was fun to actually have a crib to photograph a baby quilt on!

Now to unpack my sewing machine so that I can get on to my next adventure!