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!

Mod Baby Quilt with Fluorescent Geese

Inspiration

While shopping at Modern Domestic, one of my the local quilt stores haunts, I came across this wonderful gauzey fabric:

I loved the fluorescent pop and paintbrush effect of the pattern. I had no idea what I was going to make with it, just that I needed to have some. I knew that I wanted it to be a quilt backing so I wasn't going to just get a 1/3 of a yard (my standard cut for "I love it but I don't know what I am going to do with it", because you can get a 10" square). Given that it wasn't an inexpensive fabric, I opted for one yard, knowing that I would be able to make a small, stroller sized quilt from that. I didn't want to take away from the lovely backing with a bunch of competing prints, so I proceeded to get a stack of solids that matched the colors in print to use in my quilt top.  Part of my draw to this particular fabric was that I knew I had fluorescent yellow fabric at home just waiting for the right project to be showcased in.

It was suggested that I take a photo of the stack so I could reference the color names later. Glad I did!

Decision Time

Unlike so many of my fabric stacks, this one did sit for too long before I was ready to start sewing it up. This meant that I was going to have to find a pattern so I could get going!

I grabbed a healthy number of my quilting books and the few magazines I have purchased and started combing through them.

I knew I had a winner when I saw this one:

Fresh Quilts. Fall/Winter 2014

However, there was a problem. It is a common problem when you don't buy fabric with a particular pattern in mind. This quilt was big, way too big for the one yard of backing that I had. Generally, I have the same response to this problem, scale the quilt down. And while this can be an easy task, it can also involve an immense amount of math. For this one I did a lot of maths and a little fudging :)

Wrestling

This little quilt fought me the whole way, from a tricky pattern to scale down to my color choices, it was rough going. First, I realized that for the pattern I was going to need another color in addition to what I had purchased. Instead of heading straight to the store, I looked through my stash of solids. This was a lot easier than it would have been in the past. Moving from my craft room, since it is now the nursery, into the dining room had the huge advantage of forcing me to sort through and organize many things. And guess what, I found something!

Then, (and I'm sorry that I don't have progress picks on this one) had decided to use this forest green fabric I had in my stash for my main color since I had a whole yard. It was on sale and a good color, so I bought a bunch. Somewhat unlike me, I decided that I trusted my instincts and just cut everything out without making any kind of test piece first. The result,? After sewing two rows together I HATED it. And not just my usual "I don't know if this is going to turn out" dislike, this was disgust. I was going to ruin my beautiful backing fabric with this atrocity.

So much wasted fabric!

After being really annoyed with myself for one, wasting fabric and time and two, going against my normal cautious, methodical approach, I headed off to the fabric store to find a more suitable choice for my main color. I decided on the dark royalish blue, Mediterranean was the way to go. This time, I was not wrong. So I forged ahead.

The rows with just the rectangles went together very quickly. Then it was on to the geese, or half square triangles (HST), depending on how you look at it. And things got sticky again. Ah maths. In order for the HST to line up with the rectangles, they couldn't actually be square. I was pretty tired of math at this point, and decided to handle this in a lazy way. I would make HST triangles that would be tall enough and then I would cut the back of them so they would be the right width. Again, because it was too much math to come up with the exact size I needed for the height, I just over sized them a bit and planned on cutting them down. This turned out to be a very smart decision :)

I have never really trimmed anything while quilting before. It seemed tedious and unnecessary. If everything is cut the right size before you sew it together, why would you need to trim? Well, I am learning there are lots of reasons. First, your seam allowance is unlikely to be perfect. Second, and this is especially true with triangles and bias edges, things get all shifty and come out a bit funky shaped. So as I sewed together my trimmed and a bit hacked off "flying geese" together, I realized that this whole process had given me some wonderfully perfect points. Ah, the little things.

Half square flying geese with pretty points.

The End is in Sight

At this point, pretty much everything went smoothly. It took me a bit to decide on quilting and thread colors but that is pretty par for the course. I also opted for some really awesome bamboo batting in this one. Again, because this is a pretty small quilt, I was willing to splurge on the expensive batting. The drape came out so nice on this quilt that there may be more bamboo batting in my future!

I am very proud of this little finish. One, it is for my boy and it was the first thing that I finished for him and two, it took so much persistence to get through this project. I stuck to my guns, didn't compromise and in the end, got exactly what I wanted. Always a great feeling!

Nursery Reveal!

A Room for Tatum Noah Taylor

After a brief tussle over the idea of a dual purpose nursery/craft room, we set about re-arranging the house to accommodate my hobby AND our growing family.

We decided early on the bright green walls. Before we  knew if we were having a boy or a girl. From there I added colors, lots of bright colors: deep blue, orange-red, sunny yellow. Grey accents would calm things down.

Originally, the theme was hot air balloons and elephants. Mostly, because I had seen these amazing hot air balloons in Dundee, OR when we were out there on one of our wine tasting adventures with my dad. They were my reward for participating in the annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage despite not being able to partake in the festivities.

After this great start, I did a little more shopping and decided that my theme was too disjointed and narrow. I decided the remedy was to broaden the theme around the balloons to be an overall travel theme. This would also allow us to incorporate Buddy's love of airplanes. I don't know why I was surprised when he told me that he had a set of painted, steel airplanes in the attic from when he was a kid. I loved them and I loved the idea of incorporating them into the nursery. The new theme was winner!

Worried that the planes would get lost on the bright green walls, we mounted them on burlap and framed them in bright white.

With the planes and the hot air balloons in place, it was time for the fun stuff!

The Handmade Bits

When visiting the amazing Holly of Marshmueller at a craft show at Laurelhaurst school, I found this great print with the raccoon by Marika Paz. Since it wasn't a big print, I knew I wanted to do a mini collage. We added the wooden "T" but more was needed to complete the look.

I found the quote in a stamp pack that I had and knew I wanted to use that. I went looking for things to complement it. I ended up with this cute little windblown bunny from one of Cricut cartridges and am very pleased with how it came out.

The last piece to come about was the "EXPLORE" sign. Ingredients were: online inspiration, a Martha Stewart tutorial, scrap wood, Mod Podge, Cricut cut letters and a perfect map print paper.

The changing pad cover was made using this tutorial. Something went awry with my math/cutting and there is less fabric around the bottom than ideal but it is certainly functional. I adore this print and the fact that it isn't overly matchy with the rest of the nursery fabrics.

The overall look = LOVE

I was inspired by this pin to do the airplane, banner and clouds over the crib. I was very thankful for the applique foot my mom bought me last year for Christmas for my Bernina. It made creating the banner a breeze and gave it a very polished look.

The clouds are felt stuffed with polyfil and hand sewn with red embroidery floss.

I wasn't originally going to make a crib skirt, but after looking at buying one and discovering what a plain grey one was going to cost, I figured taking the time to do it was worth it. It also meant that I could customize it with Tatum's nursery fabrics.

Bizzy Kid Quilt

Last but not least, of course there had to be a quilt! Not out of the norm for me, I had purchased a large stack of fabrics prior to settling on a pattern. I was on the hunt for something simple and not too fussy, but also a little more than just squares and rectangles. The Bizzy Kid pattern from Cluck Cluck Sew, hit the nail on the head. It required a few additional store trips to secure all the necessary fabric but overall the quilt went together easily and most importantly, turned out exactly like I wanted.

The back on this one tripped me up a bit. I changed my mind a few times and ended up needing to stretch my yardage. Incorporating the squares to create the cross pattern allowed me to add some super fun prints and stretch my yardage. Win!

I know it on the big side for a baby, but I am looking forward to snuggling under it and reading Tate a story very soon!

Now all we need is a baby! With my due date looming, I know we won't be waiting too much longer :) :) :)