I am making some progress on the Polka Dot tree.  Getting the basics right is always slow going…and the truth is, I am making this up as I go along so we’ll see how it turns out.

The shape of the tree was first drawn on freezer paper.

As you can see, I had to tape several rows of freezer paper together.  Freezer paper is cheap.  Large format drawing paper is not.  I can work with almost anything.

Next I took the garment wool, which was half-price at the local shop, and I attached Wonder Under 805 to the back.  Any double sided adhesive paper would work, especially Steam-a-Seam Lite.  However, my experience is that once I attach the wool and iron it into position, the Wonder Under causes fewer problems with the sewing needle getting loaded with glue gunk.  Every project is slightly different so we’ll see how this goes.

Next, I laid out the wool with the fusible on the back right side up over my cutting mat, and placed the freezer paper drawing on top.  Then I simply trace the drawing with a rotary cutter.

Next comes the tricky part, as the tree then is just a squiggly bunch of fabric that has to be switched over and laid out on the red twill.  Once it is moved into position, then I carefully remove the backing which allows me to fuse the tree to the background.

This is where you have to get creative.  I happen to own a small flat ironing pad which I literally move around under the flat tree, and iron/fuse a little at a time until the tree is attached to the twill.  It doesn’t have to be perfectly fused, as I will be stitching down all the branches and the trunk.  The fusing just has to be enough to hold everything in place while I am moving it around under the machine to stitch it on.

Next I spread it out over a layer of quilt batting to act as stabilizer.

This is NOT the quilt sandwich!

I will eventually trim off the edge of the quilt batting and attach more fabric to the sides of the quilt (I think…if all goes as planned). But I will be fusing polka dot leaves on top of all the branches – 60 of them, one for every fabric I received in the exchange.  Then I plan to do some embellishing and then once all is finished on the top of the quilt, I will add ANOTHER layer of quilt batting and the backing and then quilt the whole project.

Whew!  I’m exhausted just thinking about it.  But everything follows one step at a time.

Keep putting one foot in front of the other and eventually you make progress.  Just like life.