Little Forest Quilt-Along: Week 2 (and giveaway information)

Hello Little Forest Quilt Along Friends!

How are you coming with your fabric selection?  Remember to get your fabrics posted before midnight tonight on our Flickr Group to be in on my giveaway!  Many of you have posted your progress, and I am totally loving the fabrics you are picking out!  We are going to have so many cute, cute, cute versions of this quilt!

Are you ready for your instructions for Week 2?  I knew you were!

The instructions are easy for this week....

1. Get all your fabrics cut out.
2. Sew up at least 1/2 of the trees you'll need to complete your project.

That's it!  (Next week, we'll finish the trees and assemble the top.)  See?  We're breaking this down into really small, manageable steps to finish this in a few weeks.

My co-hostess, Linda, is paper piecing her trees.  If you want to check that out, hop on over to her blog and see.

I thought I'd give you a few tips I learned when I was sewing up my trees.  I know a couple of you are somewhat new to sewing/quilting, so I thought some tips might be useful.

First, sew one of your colored triangles to your white triangle.  Press your seam toward the dark (tree) fabric. 

When you press, press...don't iron.  Don't slide your iron around.  These are bias edges, so it's a good idea not to tug and pull on them.

After you open up this seam, you'll see a dog ear at the top.  (There's one at the bottom, too, but don't worry about it for now).

 
I found it easier to sew the next step if I trimmed these off.

See how much easier it is to line up the two edges if you've trimmed those dog ears off?

Now, I tried to line these up by matching up my seam lines.  I stuck a pin in the seam line, about 1/4" from the edge.  This will help keep the top of your tree together so that when you sew, the seam won't shft around on you.  This will help you keep your point at the top of the tree nice and pointy.

Can you see how the pin just kisses the top of the green fabric on each piece?  Don't worry about how the rest of the white fabric lines up or even the bottom of the tree.  You're going to be trimming it off anyway.  I think the point is the most important part to match.

I put another pin in, just for good measure, and I liked sewing it from the bottom of the tree up.

Sorry this is a little blurry.  The camera seemed to focus on my hand rather than on my sewing foot.  But what I want you to see here is that I leave that pin in at the point and sew almost right to it.  I don't remove that pin until my needle is almost right on top of it.  I want to hold it together as long as I can.

Because there was so much bulk up at that point, I decided to press this seam open.  Since my other seams were going down, I started pressing at the top and moved down.  It just makes pressing easier.

So, it looks like this after pressing.

I'm planning to make all my tree trunks the same color, so I sewed one really long strip of tree trunks.  (One person in our quilt along is making her trunks all different widths.  I really like that idea!)

I pressed my seams here toward my tree trunk.  It makes for a little bulk.  Not sure if that's the best way to do it, but I was trying to avoid having the seam allowances show through the white later.

Center that on your tree and sew.  Notice my pressed seam is away from the foot as I sew.  That just makes it easier.

I pressed this seam allowance toward the tree.  I thought that would reduce bulk at the seam allowance best.

Here's how I approached trimming.  The block will be 3.5" wide.  So, I put the 1.75" mark of my ruler right on that center tree seam and trimmed off the right side.

Next, I spun my tree around and put that rigght side (the one I just cut) on the 3.5" mark (and the 1.75" mark should be right on that center seam again).  I trimmed off the left side.

Next, I straightened the bottom, taking off as little as possible. 

Next, I lined up my 4" line along that freshly-cut bottom edge (because it is supposed to be 4" tall), and trimmed off the top.

And here it is!

Below are some of the other ones I practiced on....

I love this polka dotted one.  Didn't quite get my point to match at the top, but it's okay.

And I love this blue swirly one.  This is the one that is on our logo!

I hope these tips are helpful to you.  I'm sure there are other good ways to do this.  This is just how I did it. If you have other tips, I'd love to hear them.

HOW ABOUT ANOTHER GIVEAWAY?

Post photos of the trees you've completed (remember, at least half of them!) on our Flickr Group before Friday, September 16 at midnight.  I'll pick a winner by drawing names from a hat for another secret surprise prize!  Trying to keep you guys motivated to stay on track and finish!

Okay, I better go get sewing now.  I got these done early and got cocky.  I was thinking, "Oh, yeah!  I'm ahead!"  Well, I'm not anymore, so I better get on the stick!

Thanks for posting all your great photos so far!  I love seeing them!

Have a great weekend.

Until next time,

Mama Pea

 

Comments

[lynn]

love those trees! i'm not participating, but i'm thankful for the instructions for the future = thanks!

[Linda in Calif.]

These trees are just too cute!! They will make such a wonderful quilt. And your tutorial is great - easy to understand. After seeing all your trees, I can't wait to get started on mine!!

[Lynn]

Cute, cute trees! Guess I'd better get busy! I've got my P. all lined up to go play at friend's houses both Saturday and Sunday. DH will be busy watching football and I'll be making trees.

[Heather]

Hi Mama Pea. I couldn't find your email address on your website so I'm posting this comment here. I just tried to subscribe to your RSS feed but I had to just as quickly unsubscribe because you aren't currently providing a full feed. I don't know if that's a conscious choice? I can count on one hand the number of quilt bloggers that I'm aware of who choose not to provide a full feed and I know they lose a lot of followers because of it. Many of use who use feed readers won't follow blogs that don't provide full feeds ... what's a quilting blog without photos, for example. I thought I'd let you know why I'm not a current follower. I hope you'll let me know if you switch to a full feed because I really would like to keep up with what you're doing.

Thanks for the tree construction tutorial. These are sweet!

[Caroll D]

Great tutorial. Wish I had the time for this one. BTW, what's a full feed and how do you know if you have it or not?

[Allie]

The blue swirly one is my favorite - those are darling!

[Caitlin]

A full feed is when you can see all the post in a feed reader such as google. Instead of just the first few lines which is what is currently showing.

I love the trees! I'm going to have to make some. I have my mum interested as well!

[Melody]

Great tutorial, can;t wait to get started. I've put my photos on the Flickr stream.

[Peggy Plumley]

*sigh* Half the trees needed....

Well I started cutting out tree fabric when I went home for lunch today. I think I mentioned before that I am making a wall hanging (I redesigned it a little to fit my wall), a table topper and a table runner (for my dresser in the dining room). Between the three projects I need 87 trees for half. I may be able to do it. Chain piecing, here I come!!! Decided not to go to JoAnn's tonight, but to go home after work and cut more and sew trees!!!

I am still really excited!!!