Bento Box Progress

Hi, I have been hard at work this week putting together my Bento Box quilt top. I am creating my Bento Boxes from a jelly roll set of red and black prints that I won back in December during the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day contest. I added 4 more black and red combination print fat quarters and white and gray solid yardages.

Zen Gardens Bento Box

Here I just laid out some of the blocks that I have pieced so far. I intend to mix up the blocks more. I tried to divide my jelly roll strips up and combine half with gray and the other with white. I ended up with 52 gray and 46 white quadrants. I was shooting for making 49 complete bento box blocks. I was one short because I ended up with 3 gray blocks and no white ones to add to it. I quickly pieced together two white quadrants to make my missing one.

I am not sure what collections all these fabrics came from. I was not told whether it was something that the blogger I won it from purchased as is, or pieced the collection herself? A couple of the selvage edges had Zen Gardens on them. It seemed fitting for the collection. Zen Gardens would be a great name for a Bento Box quilt.

Bento Box block mockup 1

A set of pieced bento blocks laid out in a mockup placement.

Bento Box Block mockup 2

I was thinking of leaving out the red jelly roll strips with the fans on them, but I ended up needing that number of strips to make the amount of blocks I needed. I rather like the prints now with the touch of gray. One jelly roll strip gives you enough pieces to make the colored pieces for the two coordinating blocks. So two red fan strips made 4 bento boxes.

Serenity Now

There are numerous ways to lay out bento boxes when in their block quadrant stage. I thought about having all four pieces be different, but it was too wild and confusing. The more traditional style use one print/one solid and then opposites in one set. You can use two prints and one solid as well. I am going to piece mine as two prints and two solids. My version of a controlled chaos.

In my honest and true fashion with quilt projects the past couple months, I ended up sewing something wrong and had to rip 46 white strips off a set of quadrants that I placed and sewn on the wrong side. Thankfully it was an easy fix. I consider myself quite lucky, since I am only using a tutorial for making a bento box block to make the entire quilt from. When I first was calculating fabric needed, I figured I could get three sets  of 1 – 2.5 inch sq, a 2.5 by 4.5 inch rectangle and 1 – 2.5 by 6.5 inch rectangle. That was not going to work to make blocks. More pencil scratching led to that I needed 4 – 2.5 inch squares, 4- of the 4.5 inch rectangles, and 2 – of the 6.5 inch rectangles. I could get those all out of one jelly roll strip. One colored jelly roll strip and one solid led to making 2 complete bento boxes or eight quadrants.

Sewing with my Viking 990

Here is my sewing set up. It can be a bit dark on a cloudy day. I would love to lighten up the paneling color.

Bento Blocks waiting to be sewn

I have 11 of 49 blocks pieced. I hope to finish the rest today and assemble my flimsy.

Backing Fabric Idea

I found this red,black and white paisley floral print at Walmart of all places yesterday. I thought it would be awesome pieced into the back of the quilt. I am thinking about piecing in a row of red plus blocks made from some of the red fabric I cut wrong from my Midnight Mystery Quilt along quilt. I have 34 4 inch squares that I can play with. I am keeping the major oops of the 150 3.5 inch squares for a future project. The 4 inch squares were not cut wrong, but since I did not have enough of that red to replace the wrong pieces. I just started over with a different shade of red. I have black solid yardage to fill out the rest of the backing of the quilt.

Monday is the start of week 3 of the New Blogger’s Blog Hop and I will be participating this week. My post will be up Sunday night.

Thanks for stopping by my blog. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. I will be linking up with the various weekend linky parties that are listed on front page.

Happy Sewing,

Shelley