Forest Friends Quilt Along

It seems like it’s only been a few days since Joanna invited me to be a part of the Forest Friends QAL and here we are at the close of it!

My forest ‘flora’ is the trillium. Here's an interesting fact about this flower: if you pick the blossom, the plant will likely die. I’ve been tempted, but never have!

Where I live, the trillium flowers are white.  Joanna worked up the final .PDF for my design (thank you!) and represented a red flower. Maybe you will want to make yours a little differently than mine and choose red.

*This design is not very difficult as it is three petals and three leaves that are similar. Because it is a flower with three petals and the paper has 4 corners, it sits in a way that makes the design like a puzzle.

With the ‘puzzle’ warning, just be aware of your piece placement!

*FYI, at the end of this blog, there are links to download .PDFs of both the pattern and the instructions.






Here’s what you will need:

• FQ or scraps of red or white for the trillium petals 
•  Scraps of green for the leaves 
• Scraps of yellow/gold for center
• Scraps of light green or gold for the tips of the leaves 
•  FQ or large scraps for the background 

For the center, I used Dimples by Andover Fabrics which is a tone-on-tone fabric that comes in a huge array of colors.

For the flower petals, I happened to have had a piece of white fabric with pin-tucks that I used as a representation of the veins of the petals--a striped fabric might work well too.  I used a dark green batik for the background to simulate the dark forest floor and a striated batik for the leaves.

Working the design:

• When printing, be sure that your printer is NOT set to “Fit to Page.”
• Before you proceed, measure the square on the Trillium Pattern .PDF.
• If you need a paper-piecing method, here is the method I use. You won’t end up with paper on the floor because you don’t sew on the paper!

Piecing the Trillium: 
Be aware that several of these pattern sections look quite similar. Double check your section letters before stitching them together!

• Cut out pattern pieces A-L. You might want to lay them out like the design so you get oriented to how everything fits together.
• Begin piecing with Unit A, stitching together all of the pieces in each section, finishing with Unit L.
• After all of the individual sections are stitched, begin sewing sections together in pairs.
• Sew A to B
• Sew C to D
• Sew E to F
• Sew G to H
• Sew I to J
• Sew K to L
• You want to end up with two compound sections with NO “Y” seam, so continue as follows:
• Sew unit AB to CD
• Sew unit ABCD to EF. Remove freezer paper if you haven’t already. Press seams and set aside. 
• Sew unit GH to IJ.
• Sew unit GHIJ to KL. Remove freezer paper if you haven’t already. Press seams and set aside.
• Carefully sew unit ABCDEF to unit GHIJKL. Press.

Voila! You are finished. You can use this block to make a pillow. Add a few other designs from the Forest Friends QAL to make a wallhanging. Make all the blocks for a full-sized quilt! If you make my design (or any of the others from the Forest QAL, please share a picture of it at Flickr.

If you have trouble of any kind, please email me!

Thank you, Joanna and Julianna for hosting this fantastic Paper-piecing QAL!

• Trillium Paper-pieced Pattern
• Instruction Sheet for Piecing Trillium Pattern