Oh My, This Tree of Life of Mine

I've been working on setting my Tree of Life blocks together. I knew exactly which fabrics were needed for the setting triangles, but the problem was, there wasn't any large pieces except for in one particular fabric. And it was a woven. Uh oh, you know what that means! After cutting the one big square and then cutting twice on the diagonal, my cutting template was going to be a little wonky.

Tree of Life finally all put together...

I suppose I could have should have used a large piece of paper first, but you know me. Once a decision is reached, I am off and running. {Must be a result of letting go of the left side of the brain in order to fully embrace the artistic right--there is no easy melding of the two!} So I fussed and I fiddled with my odd bits of fabric, trying to make sure I had enough fabric to cut all of my setting triangles without using an excessive amount of any one fabric. Imagine my surprise when I noticed they did not all end up at exactly the same size and length. Hmm... Well, some quilts do need a little more finessing than others, don't they?

Choke, gasp, giggle... Looking at the picture below, you can see that I completed managed to forget about some of the sashing and had to deal with that as well. It gets worse. I totally forgot it in several end pieces. Yep. No idea how that can possibly happen, but I will say that sewing late in the evening is often prime time for trouble of this sort.

A big 'oops'...

But I did finally get it all ripped out and put back together properly.*sigh Just a little bit of stretch in some of my woven setting triangles though. Yes, yes, I pinned the dickens out of all the pieces, but sometimes this can happen with loosely woven fabrics and seam ripper (ahem!) assault. Hey, I was NOT in a good mood about this, okay?

I persevered and sewed it all together best I could, then ironed very carefully. I painstakingly trimmed the outside edges of the quilt once and then went back around trimming much closer for the second round. On the second round of trimming, I cut out a few little wobbles in the fabric caused from stretching and hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, that will take care of the worst of my troubles.

All put together!

One can only hope! The picture above does not show the quilt laying completely flat so it probably looks worse than it actually is. I had been thinking about the possibility of adding a border, and now with my setting triangle issues, I am settled on the idea. It positively needs one now just to hold things stable.

Auditioning a border fabric...

This black fabric with the little orange flowers suits me perfectly and luckily there is just enough! I love the combination of sweet little flower print, homespuns and scrappy trees. It all makes me very happy.

Ready for the next step!

Upon measuring the outside of my quilt, I also realized it does not come out anywhere close to 'square'. Adding this border will help to square it up and ensure the outside edge doesn't have the odd ripple after being quilted. Oh you have no idea how much this quilt top has made me laugh, all the fudging, fussing and fiddling in order to make it look reasonably well put together! Thankfully this in not my normal method of sewing or I would probably never finish anything at all. The name 'Tree of Life' should have been a harbinger of things to come for me with this quilt, as my life has never, ever been straightforward, simple or easy....