I guess the trunk is narrower than it looks. I thought you would have enough room to avoid that bulk, but trial is the best teacher!

Nancy

Thanks for piping up here, Alex! Every quilt is a learning experience here...

I don't think it should cause a problem - great thinking!

Ladies, I just made a sample, as Annis suggested. There was no problem attaching the trunk to the tree with the seams pressed inward. However, there was a HUGE problem in attaching one block to the next one below it! I now believe the seams MUST BE PRESSED OUTWARD. Otherwise, when you sew together two trees one below the next in a vertical row as we're going to do, the inward-pressed seams of the trunk are right on top of the summit of the tree where there are seams from the tree tip AND the left and right background fabrics. Way too much bulk there if the tree trunks are pressed inward!

Well that was my lesson-learned today. Good thing I asked! My instinct was sooooo OFF! The lesson: when in doubt, try it out!

Thank you, Nancy and Annis. My instinct told me it was okay and I did not see any possible problems. Annis, I like your idea of trying a sample--that way I ruin just one block, not 76 of them if it doesn't look right.

It might work. I would make a sample block first and sew the bottom strip set to the top of the tree to see how the seams fall.

Hi Renata -

Looking at the pattern, I think you are fine pressing either direction. There are no seams that need to be matched, so that shouldn't be a problem. (Note that I'm not working on this pattern at this point, so there may be a detail I'm missing...)

Nancy

I have a question regarding piecing the tree trunks. To save time, I cut two strips of background fabric 2 1/8" and one tree trunk strip 1 1/4". I sewed these together with the trunk fabric in the middle to save time piecing every single trunk. After pressing, I will subcut these into 1 1/2" pieces. The video shows the seams pressed outward.

Question: will I have a problem later if I press the seams inward instead?

The reason I would like to press the seams inward is that it gives the illusion of fullness to the tree trunk. I know this sounds like a silly question but would hate to have to redo it all if it turned out to be a good question after all... Thanks!!!