Bento Box Baby Quilt

With all of the hot weather, I’ve dedicated a lot of time to sitting with my feet up in cool places (love those comfy Starbucks chairs!). For my birthday, I got a Kindle (wonderful little thing), so that’s been a good source of amusement, but I’ve also finally committed time to sitting down and finishing the bento box quilt – adding the binding, and finally sewing in all of the loose ends from quilting.

You can sew on one side of the binding with the machine (generally to the front, but I forgot and sewed it to the back instead. Oops. Luckily, I think I’m the only one that will ever notice.), but the second side needs to be sewn by hand. I am so slow at that kind of work, but the effort is worth every minute – I love the way the binding looks when it’s done.

So smooth and finished.

Here’s the finished quilt, all washed and crinkly:

And the back, where the quilted circles are more visible:

Kevin took all of the photos. He was playing with his new flash, umbrella and other photo equipment, and managed to get an amazing shot of the texture (from the quilting and the crinkly, washed cotton) of the front:

I am so happy with the way this turned out. I think the quilting was a perfect choice – continuing the geometric theme started by the square piecing, but not too rigid. Somehow it doesn’t seem like a baby quilt should be all right angles – I like that the circles soften things a bit. The choice to use three groups of circles was mostly stylistic, but a sentimental part of my mind also thinks of them as representing the three of us as a family.

Finishing the baby’s knitting didn’t seem to convince him it was time to appear, but perhaps he was waiting for his quilt? I’m still a week shy of my due date (August 10th) so maybe he’s just biding his time in there, having too much fun with all of the stretching and hiccupping, but we’re very eager to meet him. 🙂