I feel like it has taken forever to get the baby quilt background in place, so I was VERY excited to move on to the next part of the quilt…..

THE BIG TREE!!

I delved into my stash and did a fabric pull for the tree parts….

ONE NOTE HERE….. I am patting myself on the back for not having bought fabric since January, and I plan not to buy any more this year. When you look at my studio, you can see that I probably will NEVER need to buy fabric again!! HA!!

As before, I am trying to only use Wonder-under on the edges of the fabric pieces, so I started on the outside and worked my way in….

It was super easy to keep adding branches and fabrics to the tree trunk….

I am not super happy with the “ledge” that separates the trunk portion from the limbs, but I have plans to cover it up with a squirrel.

I pulled one large scrap of dark green fabric, ironed Wonder-under to the back, and started cutting out largish leaves…..

I did the same with a lighter green, then again with an even lighter one.

I decided to put the leaves in groups of three, and this is the result…..

The next step is to add the various animals reading books….

…..I can’t wait!

One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.

You can find out more at this link…..

When I last posted about the commissioned baby quilt, I had brought it to this stage…..

But then life got in the way, and I couldn’t get back to this project. Since it is due soon, it was time to re-join the creative world!!

The first step was to add the left-hand side of the forest, leaving space for the BIG tree…..

I had to do some finnagling to get the path to stay in place…..

Now it was time to add some hills in the background….lower on the left side and higher on the right…..

Okay….background is completed…..

Tomorrow, we will add the big tree!!

Last week, I shared how I set up my pattern and design board for the new baby quilt…

Baby Quilt Inspiration Board

And now, it is time to start adding fabrics, and color, and making decisions…..

YIPPEE!!

When I saw the inspiration photo, I started sondering if I had enough of those peachy colors…..

OKAY……no need to worry!!

I knew that these colors were going to be the path, so I selected a bunch and laid them out by value….

My plan was to sew these fabrics in strips, going from light to dark. To get me a feel for what I was doing, I put a piece of tracing paper over the path and divided it into parallel strips….

At this point, I got engrossed in doing the sewing and forgot to take photos, but here is the final result….

I LIKE that path!!!

Now I pulled out the greens and started finding a gradation that I liked….

I wanted to use similar strips, but didn’t want to sew them in straight lines; instead, I wanted to have some curves in there as well.

I didn’t want the curves to be raw-edged without some fusible, and I didn’t want to fuse the ENTIRE strip, so I did the next best thing…..

I cut a 1-inch strip of Wonder Under and fused it to the edge of my fabric….

I cut a gentle curve out of the strip….

…and it was ready to fuse to the previous strip….

This worked well…

Now my problem was figuring out how to attach the grass to the path with fusible on the edges.

I finally decided to cut a strip of Wonder Under in the shape of the path (REVERSED OF COURSE)….

…placing it carefully (and fearfully) on the greens….

It took a bit of finnagling, but the result was great….

Unfortunately, we are on the road for a few days, so I won’t be able to work on this until next week.

YIKES…..my deadline is August 5th!!!

MUST…..GET……BUSY!!