A couple of weeks ago, my mom asked for another bento bag — this time she wanted a black one to take out to fancy dinners. I asked what kind of fabric she wanted for the top bit, and she said she’d like something white and red. Gah… the color combination that makes the least happy is black, red, and white! But I told myself to suck it up, and a while later I sent my mom a whole bunch of links to red and white fabric and asked if she liked any of them. She poked around the stores whose links I sent, and said she also liked fabrics like these. Hey, those aren’t red and white!

I bought some of the not red and white fabric she said she liked and ended up making her one relatively sober bag (it’s mostly black!):

with mushrooms inside


… and one sillier bag with the not red fabric I was pretty sure she liked the most.

I really love the food fabric I used for the interior, but I don’t think anyone else in my family understand why I think it’s so cute. hehe.

I also made her a quickie grocery bag for the wrapping, but I didn’t get a picture of it because I finished it right before we went over to my parents’ house.

Speaking of which! (…because I used my new machine to make her grocery bag) I finally got my new machine and tried it out this weekend. It sews so fast; it’s crazy! I think it’s super cool, and I think I’m going to try quilting my Made in Cherry quilt this week. I tried it out for the first time at around midnight (since that’s when I sew) in my living room, but my living room table isn’t the most solid, and the machine kind of made our whole place vibrate. I tried putting it on a placemat, and then I tried using it on the floor, but I guess that didn’t help because my downstairs neighbor came up to tell me that she could hear a vibration… how embarrassing!

The next day, I moved it to the dining room table (which is very solid) and put a doubled-over (ugly) foam floor mat from Lowe’s under it, and it was much better. My husband went downstairs so that I could run the machine while he asked the neighbors to listen for it, and our neighbor said that they couldn’t hear it then, so yay! I’m so glad that our neighbor was so forthright to let me know right away when my machine was too loud (she was really nice about it), and also that my husband suggested that we let our neighbor know we were trying to fix the problem and then ask them to listen for it while I ran the machine (I wouldn’t have thought of that on my own). Everything works out so nicely when people just talk to each other! >_<

Edit: Linking to Keyka Lou’s weekly goal giveaway.