Calling 'Dionne...

Dionne, If you don't contact me by the end of the day, I will pick another name for the Bento pattern giveaway... Email me at darlingmillie AT gmail DOT com with your mailing address.

Thank you!

While we are waiting, here are some fabrics for a project I will be starting after New Year's.

And The Winner Is...

I'm waiting for an email confirmation...

Bento Rule Change...

OK! OK! OK! OK! If you want to be entered in the drawing for the Bento Box Pattern giveaway and you don't have a blog... you don't need one. But if I pick your name, I have to be able to contact you, and if you don't have a blog, I can't do that. So email me (address in this post).

And yes, if you live in Japan, you can enter. I said so in rule # 7.

Calling Anonymous...

Dear Anonymous,

You make quilts, you have five adopted kids. Email me at darlingmillie AT gmail DOT com and tell me about yourself. I will be happy to enter you in the Bento Box pattern drawing.

Want Bento?

Now that the giant Bento Box Quilt is on its way to its new home, I can move on to other things. After Christmas, I will resume work on my Alphabet Sampler Quilt. In the meantime I'm doing what every quilter does after finishing up a big project - cleaning the sewing room.

Since I made so many Bento Box blocks, the instructions are engraved in my brain, and I certainly don't need the pattern any more. So I thought I would give it away. You leave a comment, and I will put all names together and pick a winner. But there are a couple of rules.

1. You must have a quilting, sewing or crafting blog. I have to be able to find it when I click on your name and look at your profile. Cat bloggers are welcome too.

2. You can only leave one comment. No ballot box stuffing.

3. You must leave a comment on THIS POST. No exceptions.

4. The deadline is Friday December 12. When it isn't Friday anywhere in the world, the drawing will be over.

5. I will pick a winner on Saturday December 13. I will try to contact you by email the same day. If you don't have an email address in your profile or on your blog, (and I understand perfectly if you don't), then I will leave a comment on your most recent post.

6. I will post the winner on Sunday December 14, once I have contacted the winner. If I don't hear from the winner by the end of the day on Monday, I'll pick another name.

7. I will pay postage to anywhere in the world.

8. This is an authentic Bento Box pattern in pristine condition.

9. There is only ONE.

10. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to. That means I can change the rules.

Good luck!

Bento Box Finished

If you heard the Hallelujah Chorus at 10:49 Eastern Time this morning, then you heard me when I finished the Bento Box Quilt. I'll need a couple of people to help me take pictures of the finished quilt, and it's snowing here today, so I don't know when I will be able to post a picture of it.

But if you want an idea of how big it really is...I am five feet tall, and here I am standing on my bed.

Got Quilt Top?

It's not the best photo, and I was standing on the step stool, holding the camera up against the ceiling, trying to get the whole thing in. Obviously the corners are cut off, and it may not be in the best focus, but here it is, all 81 square feet of it. It has a stunning blue for the backing.

You can click the picture to enlarge it. My dining room table, by the way, is currently in my living room.

Sweet Sixteen & The Second Half

I told you I took pictures of my layout and sewed the blocks together accordingly. But I didn't tell you my printer only prints in black and white. So it isn't as easy as it looks. Here is my layout of 16 pieces, with the printed photos I used.
This is the second half of the quilt. Next I will sew the two big pieces together to make the top of the quilt. Then I will get the backing ready. (And do the grocery shopping, and do the laundry and make some cookies for my son... and it's going to snow later today.)

Auditioning the Last Twenty

I really like arranging the blocks with the stick. It's nice not to have to get down on my hands and knees all the time. Here I am working on the last section of the quilt - the last 20 blocks.

I have my arrangement, and took my photos and labeled the photos with row and block numbers so when I sew them together later they will be exactly the way I envisioned them. The backing fabric is due today, so that will go through the "washing machine shuffle" and then be ironed and pieced to make the backing. My son volunteered to help me tie the quilt on Saturday, so I can finish it up on Sunday. For that, of course, I shall feed him vast quantities of food. Maybe I'll make this.

And maybe even cookies.

More Bento work

I sewed up another 20 blocks into one big chunk last night. Tonight I will add another row of 5 blocks to one chunk, and then sew those two together and have half the quilt top done.

Yes, a king sized quilt is VERY VERY BIG, and truthfully, I hate them that size. They just get so unwieldy.

To keep the arrangement the way I want when I sew them together, I take pictures, like the one above, print it, and then follow that. AND, I found a nifty way of arranging the blocks without getting up and down on my knees. I remembered that the French painter Matisse worked with collages in the last years of his life, moving the pieces around with a stick. I found a dowel, and then a crutch tip... can you see where this is going? While standing, I could arrange the pieces any way I wanted. It was pretty neat. Minimized the up-and-down.

Scared the daylights out of my cat.

Eighty-One and Twenty

Here is what 81 Bento Box blocks look like.

And here are twenty of them sewn into one section of the quilt.

I need to make another section just like this (4 x 5 blocks) and two 5 x 5 block sections to complete the top.

It's going to be king-sized, 108" x 108", or 9 rows of 9 blocks each.

Clare, as I worked on this, moving the blocks around on the floor, and then getting up to look at them properly, my knees and back reminded me that I'm getting old. (Actually, I'm your age.)

Blue Tape Time

It's blue tape time again.I've sewn half the block parts into "demi-blocks" and here I am just trying to get a sense of how the quilt will look, while matching up the "demi-blocks" to make full blocks.

I've got all the blocks matched into "demis" and about half sewn into full blocks.

I really tried to use each fabric only once (meaning I used 162 different fabrics) but I goofed. I found one fabric I used twice. Oh well.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I think I like the Slashed Squares design better than these bentos.

Demi Bentos

I've now completed 81 Bento box blocks. The blocks will be 12" finished and assembled in 9 rows of 9 for a king sized quilt. I'm pairing up the pieces and I hope to have the quilt top finished this weekend.

Bento Bonanza

I have now completed 72 of the 81 Bento Box blocks I need. Here are some I finished yesterday.

Back to Bentos

And my sewing room is nice and clean, neat and organized.

What I've Been Doing

These are the quilts I have been working on while making the Bento Box blocks as leaders and enders.

This one is on its way to Vienna, Austria for a little boy. Each block has something interesting for him to look at. There are spiderwebs, letters, dinosaurs, lizards, frogs, butterflies, cats, dragons, toucans and fish. There are trains and apples, and tomatoes. It's 4' by 6'.Here's the back. The circus was its own panel, and I added the red, yellow and blue to make the backing bigger.
This is one of two baby quilts (3' x 4') for twins born on July 4th. Their mother is a huge baseball fan.
This is the second one.
And here are last night's Bento Box blocks, made as leaders and enders while I assembled the second RWB quilt. I have now sewn together 38 of these blocks. I only need 34 more.

More Bentos

More Bento Blocks from Sunday, and I have six more ready to go as "leaders and enders" to use with the two small baby quilts I am working on right now.I really really really like this first one.


I love this turquoise and brown one.
This isn't brown, it's a very very deep dark purple. And the peacock feathers have a bit of lavender in them.
I love this blue toile.

More Bento Blocks

I am really having fun making these as "leaders and enders." Sometimes I like a pair so much, I just make the block. These are all from my stash, by the way.

This quilt now has a home, and it will be king size, 7 blocks by 9. So I need to design 9 more.

Bento Box Blocks

I have 12 so far. The Bento Box design is a classic counterchange pattern, which is probably why I like it so much. I love checkerboards, for example. In designing these blocks I have really tried to get a strong light/dark contrast.

I have plans for this quilt. And I have already decided to make a GIANT block on the backing, like I did with my Slashed Squares quilt.