Saint Patrick's day decorations, or will the luck o' the Irish hold?

I bought some small remnants with shamrocks on them several years ago and then didn't know what to do with them. It didn't seem right to make a bag out of them. Finally I decided to try to make a wall hanging. This seemed like a small enough project that I just might be able to finish it.

Step one, find some fabrics in my stash that would look good with the two shamrock fabrics.

A shamrock template off of the internet was easy enough, and then..........

cutting out the squares and sewing them together went along very quickly.

I appliquéd the shamrock and added tabs............

Things started going wonky when I put the border on and then the backing, though.

You can see from this picture that the squares are not flat and tight. bah.

I hung it up for a few days to think about what to do next. I didn't want to take the whole thing apart again. (I'd already tried to make it look smooth by sewing basting stitches across the quilted pieces. I'll show you what I did to fix it tomorrow.