Jolly Tree Farm 4: Tree-Mendous Holiday

 Tree-mendous Holiday is the week four block for the Jolly Tree Farm Mystery quilt offered by the Fat Quarter Shop. It is made from the Poinsettia and Pear line by Sherri and Chelsi. I am still in love with this color palette. Once again I strove to make all the houndstooth in the background face the same way as I have done in previous weeks. One sawtooth star this week had houndstooth print also, so I had to pay attention when assembling it.

Sawtooth Stars
I will admit, I was getting a bit bored with sawtooth stars by this fourth week. The color palette still enchanted me but I made the two stars, two at a time so I could chain piece wherever possible. I was careful to cut two D rectangles vertical and two D rectangles horizontal for each star in the background houndstooth. Cutting the coral houndstooth was not as much an issue since all the those pieces were square. I just had to pay attention during assembly.

In the upper star section, the top two rows out of five rows total, included the tip of the tree. In the background houndstooth rectangles, C was cut vertical, A was cut horizontal, and B was square so its orientation for cutting was irrelevant.

Tree Section

Three more rows completed the lower section of the tree and its trunk. It was a nice relief to just do straight stitching instead of all those 45° angles with associated flipping and trimming. I lined up all those rectangles in order and then chain pieced as much as I could into two rows. I then added a trunk row at the bottom.

Here is the completed week four. It was by far the easiest of the weeks. It measures 14½"x 20½".

Assembly

It wasn't until Week Five that assembly instructions were given but I decided to include the sashing and borders in this post.  I very carefully figured out how to orient the borders so that the houndstooth continued to face a consistent way... and I did it wrong for the two longest pieces, borders D and E. Fortunately I could salvage E horizontals from the wrongly cut longer D verticals. I had to piece the D verticals because I did not have enough fabric length in the correct orientation.

 

Assembled, this top measures 31½" x 36½". I am on a roll... I even prepped my binding and made my labels. Let's hope I do not come to a screeching halt as I often do when it comes to the sandwiching.  The size is small enough that I suspect I will not procrastinate too much.

The list of my four blog posts for this wall hanging follows.

Jolly Tree Farm Week One: Spruced Up (8/31/26) 11½” x 18 ½”

Jolly Tree Farm Week Two: Rejoice Fir-ever (9/14/26) 8½” x 11½”

Jolly Tree Farm Week Three: Feelin' Pine and Dandy (9/17/26) 12½"x 20½"

Jolly Tree Farm Week Four: Tree-mendous Holiday (this post) 14½"x 20½"

Jolly Tree Farm Week Five: Assembly (this post) 31½"x 36½" 

One more post for this quilt remains for me to publish — the quilting and binding. 

Jolly Tree Farm 3: Feelin' Pine & Dandy

Feelin' Pine & Dandy is the Week Three block for the Jolly Tree Farm Mystery quilt offered by the Fat Quarter Shop. It is made from the Poinsettia and Pear line by Sherri and Chelsi. Once again I strove to make all the houndstooth face the same way as I did in the previous week. I set myself an additional personal challenge to minimize visual interruptions in that polka dot fabric and to orient other prints uniformly. 

Cutting

Starting out as is my norm, I cut out my pieces and labeled them with my Alphabitties and Clover Wonder Clips on my melamine tray. For the houndstooth on the two sawtooth stars, I made sure to cut two F rectangles horizontal and two F rectangles vertical for each star. The two background B rectangles are both horizontal and the two D rectangles are both vertical. In the tree section the D rectangles are vertical and the two C rectangles are horizontal. The Feelin' Pine & Dandy block measures unfinished 12½"x 20½". It is the largest section so far.

Sawtooth Stars
The coral colored sections of the stars happened to have a directionality, just as the houndstooth print did. I was careful and planned ahead to assure a uniformity in direction of those prints. Since these pieces were all square. I did not have to adjust their cutting direction; I could orient  each ""correctly at time of assembly.

Tree Section
The tree is essential a top, middle and a bottom tier, each tier made up of two rows. Laying out the tree pieces ahead of time helped me visualize the orientation as I sewed together six rows, two at a time, to form the top, middle, and bottom tree tiers. Then they are joined with the trunk to form the tree.

The upper row of the second tier and the upper row of the third tier had the polka dot print broken up and I did not like the look. To avoid that seam I cut three additional M pieces in the place of six N pieces, and changed my assembly method. I did not see an easy way to make those dots into uninterrupted diamonds, but I could at least eliminate that vertical seam between two flying geese. Besides, a horizontal line helps distinguish between tree boughs. 

Here are the steps I took to use rectangles instead of squares to build the top half of the middle tier followed by an image of the completed middle tier with lower row attached.

I repeated the process to build the the top half of the wider, lower tier. Success! No vertical seams in the polka dots. Continuing to build to the right, this row is then attached as the upper row of the bottom tier. The polka dot triangles are not interrupted in either row. 

Here is the completed tree of week three. I too am feeling fine and dandy.

When the star section is added to the top of the tree, week three, Feelin' Pine & Dandy is complete. Please notice that I managed to get the prints which were directional — two corals, one green and the houndstooth — to face consistently the same way.

Here are the pinwheels I managed to salvage from the cut corners of the flying geese blocks. The high contrast ones are my favorite (either end of top row). Some pinwheels are not as endearing as others but I do have my rules. A pinwheel must have two or four either light or dark the same. If the lights or darks are different they must all be different or have a partner with which to pair; there can be no one man out. I incorporated two HSTs from week one. I have two HSTs left over from week three. Following my self-imposed rules, here are what I salvaged from the scraps.

• two with four identical darks and four identical lights ( left column)
• two with two different darks and four identical lights (middle column)
• two with four different darks and four identical lights ( right column)

Here is a running list of my blog posts thus far for this wall hanging.

Jolly Tree Farm Week One: Spruced Up (8/31/26) 11½” x 18 ½”

Jolly Tree Farm Week Two: Rejoice Fir-ever (9/14/26) 8½” x 11½”

Jolly Tree Farm Week Three: Feelin' Pine and Dandy (this post) 12½"x 20½"