Jewel Boxes

"Jewel Boxes" is my latest finish for the Imagine Circle of do.Good Stitches.  Back in January I asked our group to make 21" square-in-square blocks, starting with a 6" center block and adding three rounds of 3" strips. We used this palette from Design Seeds as our color inspiration:

 

After I received all the blocks, I simply quartered them, then sewed them back together to make the Bento box-like design. Easy! I had one too many blocks for the front so I incorporated it into the design of the backing.

I quilted this on my mom's longarm machine and ended up being pretty happy with how it turned out. Most of the time as I'm stitching I think that it looks terrible but after I step away from it for a while it turns out to not bother me as much. Here's a close up of the floral-ish design I was going for:

Not perfect by any means, but better than it looked while I was stitching. Here is a tutorial for the basic design, though her's look much more like flowers than mine!