Fat Cat Pattern.......borders

Before I start today's column, I thought I would share with you what two other folks are doing with their row by row quilt.  The first set is by Irene and the second is by Barb (bearfoot).   Barb reduced her pattern a bit, unfortunately, I don't remember by how much. Mine is the last one...............the one with the mistake.  Amazing how different each of ours looks, isn't it?

I thought yesterday that I would cut my borders and then do my trees.  Well, that didn't happen.  I have never had as much trouble putting on one border since I started to quilt.  I pre-cut the two lengths and they went on easily.  I pressed them and then tried to put on the top border.  That was just frustration.  It wouldn't fit. 

I knew it should fit, but grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, no way was that going to happen.  There was this gap for lack of a better word to describe it.  It was the blocks across the top that were out of whack.  I tried twice and then that little light bulb came on.  They had stretched while on the hanger waiting and waiting and waiting.

I took it to the ironing board and gave it a really good press.  I then pressed the border and lo and behold the darn thing pinned together like a charm.  Finally the inner borders were on.




I thought I would start to work on the trees.  I laid out a bunch of green fabrics and then decided to pull two of them out.  I just didn't like the "flow" of it

Take a guess which two.  I cut out the templates for the trees and then traced around them onto the fusible web.  I'm thinking I'll either cut by hand or use the rotary cutter -- leaning towards the rotary cutter as it should be faster and it definitely will be straighter.  I'll give it a whirl.

When it came time to do the trunks of the trees, I went easy!  I pressed a piece of fusible web to the back of three different brown fabrics.  I then measured both the length and the width of the pattern pieces.

and here's what I came up with.  The width for all of them is about 3/8" and the lengths are:  longest is 1 7/8", middle is 1 3/8" and the shortest is 1 1/8".

I just cut the length of the pieces and then cut a bunch of the widths.  I don't care if all the long trunks are the same colour........well not yet anyway.  I did the same for the next two sizes.  It was fast and easy and now they are done.  I hope that sometime today I can get back to putting the trees together.  I really am behind on this row.