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Flying Geese
The last three weeks we have been working on half square triangles, which can be difficult because they are cut on the bias. This week starts the beginning of our flying geese blocks. The end of this quilt booklet is near in sight! We will be piecing 64 flying geese that number sounds like a ton and gives my flashbacks to the week we were making churn dashes. There are three sets of flying geese and ill be posting my blocks individually as examples. But remember to use the fabric you LOVE!
General Supply Info:
- I use wool pressing mat, cordless iron and fabric starch
- Schmetz universal chrome needles or quilting piecing needles 75/11
- Aurifil 40 wt Mako Cotton thread, is what I sew with, I typically always use white thread.
- Clover Clips
- Sewing Pins
- Design Wall or extra piece of batting
Measurements for the pieces needed to construct this block will not be provided in this tutorial. It is a prerequisite of making this block that you have a copy of the pattern, Long Time Gone. Measurements, where applicable, can be found in this book I will note any mistakes in the booklet however that I ran into when cutting my fabric choices.
Cut all the Pieces
Cut all pieces as per cutting instructions for Block one of the flying geese. Following cutting your pieces, a design wall is helpful should you be using any directional printed fabrics. A design wall, clean table or floor will do wonders when piecing this block.
How to Make the Block
General advice:
- Tolerance Levels: you need to decide what is an acceptable tolerance level for “mistakes”. For example if your blocks are consistently 6¼” instead of 6.5″ are you ok with this. Or if your seams matching are less than an eight of an inch “off” are you ok with this. There’s no hard or fast rule and it’s different for everyone, so remember it’s your quilt so make your decision for you.
- Press your seams at each step.
- You can iron and starch your fabric prior to cutting. I also starch when pressing bulky seams.
- When pinning, pin away from you so that you don’t move your pieces when pinning.
- Where possible I chain piece all the pieces I can in one step.
Block Construction
1. Flying geese are one of the cornerstone blocks of patchwork. If you can work out a way to make accurate flying geese blocks you’ll be set to make some of the most beautiful blocks in quilting. This is the method that I use for making flying geese blocks. Like most things, I like to make them a little bigger and then trim to size to ensure accuracy. Just like with HST!
2. Use Jens Diagrams - I like to work on one unit at a time if I can help it, that means one rectangle and two squares
I ended up using some jelly roll strip scraps I had and some previously used back ground fabric