Finished Top!

 When I left off last night, I had sewn all eight of the wedges. I had big plans to get this finished ASAP.

Ha ha ha. Today was the kind of day when it feels as if The Universe is  just slightly out of whack. You know the kind I mean.

Woke up with the allergies attacking like mad. Took a Claritin. Had coffee. Had breakfast, more coffee, shower. Feeling unwell, lay down for a little bit, and woke up three hours later.

So much for sewing!

Finally after having a bit of dinner, I was able to get to the machine and back to the tree skirt.  So,
I started off sewing the wedges into pairs. Here's the first quarter sewn.

In case you were wondering how this fits under the machine, here's a glimpse.

One thing that helps immeasurably is that the pattern is so well drafted that (as long as my seams were sewn in the proper place) the pieces all fit together without a hassle.

So here's the four quarters sewn up and laid out for a preview.

I have wondered a lot about having so much green in the outer rings, but I think that the reds are so strong that they needed that dark green to balance them out.

Do you agree?

Then I sewed two of the quarters together to make a half-circle.

Okay, not a whole lot more trouble than sewing the wedges into quarters--same match points, after all.

Just a bit more fabric and paper to wrangle.

And this is how the two halves looked when they were pinned together and laid across the sewing tables.

Yes, tables. You can get an idea of the size of this thing by looking at the sewing machine in the middle of the picture, and the ironing pad next to it.

I did what I generally do when I'm sewing something like this with eight points that meet in the middle: pin them together and then baste with a long machine stitch for about 2" either side of the center match point.

No surprise, it matched perfectly. Then I sewed from the center to the outer ring in both directions--this seems to work better for me than making one long seam from edge to edge. Besides, I had sewn all the other sections from center to outside, and it worked. Don't mess with success.

So, tah-dah! Here she is, all in one piece, all 60" of her. I am celebrating that this part of the job is done. Never mind that there's a metric ton of paper to peel out of the back--that will be good TV work, or I'll take it to class, or something like that. Then a good pressing and it will be ready to pin and quilt.

Guess I need to start looking for a backing fabric!