The Tree of Life part 10: From the Ground Up

The Roots are done. It’s been a useful learning exercise to apply to the branches when I get there.

The three template pieces
and the strip pieced background

Yesterday I pieced together the strips that make up the fabric from which I cut the three root pieces. I cut what I thought was a generous number of strips, but I ended up with only just enough. It’s amazing how much everything shrinks when there are loads of seams through the middle. Today, I drew round the three root template pieces with a sharp pencil, and then cut them out just inside the pencil line. There are some potentially useful leftover bits which I can’t immediately think of a use for, but something will come to me at some point.

Cut out, assembled and glued down

I then used the new Japanese glue pen to apply all three pieces in position on the background. I had only moderate success with this – the pieces were too large for the strength of the glue, and got rubbed off as I pushed the fabric through the machine and turned it around as I was sewing. From this, I’ve learned that these pieces are better fused to the background, since this holds them tight to the surface.

Sewn down and pressed

It’s done, though, and while the fabric has drawn up and shrunk a bit, it’s not as bad as I feared. The satin stitch in a toning colour works well, and there aren’t too many wrinkly bits despite the difficult shape. I keep saying “better finished than perfect” to myself…

It looks like someone’s been logging here….

I Skyped my brother this morning, and he was able to see work in progress on the design wall behind me, which was exciting for both of us. He hadn’t seen it yet, and I had plenty to show and tell.

I’m a bit tired after the last few days. We’re in the run up to a big Christmas, plus I have some pain issues which are stopping me eating and sleeping well, so I’m going to put the Tree aside for a little while. Once the festivities are over, I will get back to it – maybe sooner – but for now, I’m going to look at a couple of small projects I’ve sidelined for some time.  Remember the triplets arriving in April I mentioned in an earlier post? Yup. Three baby quilts. I don’t know yet how many/which are boys or girls, so the quilts have to be non-specific. And I want to try paper piecing for feature blocks on them.  That’s one thing the Tree quilt has done for me – it’s made me braver about trying new stuff.

Until next time.