January Quilters’ Book Club: Flying Geese Blocks

It is time for the January edition of Quilters’ Book Club. This month, once again, I made four blocks from my Tula Pink City Sampler book. These are all 6″ blocks, and this month I chose the theme, “flying geese”. The blocks above are #44 and 42 in the book.

We have had terrible wet weather (like 3″ of rain yesterday alone!), so pretty outdoor photos were not possible. Enjoy the backdrop of my cute homemade sewing table, albeit poorer lighting. The blocks above are #54 and 51 in the book.

I have made each of my blocks “my own” by rearranging some of the colors. Above you can see how I changed up block 42. I also cut it slightly differently, in a way that made more sense to me and required fewer pieces. These simple blocks are a really good place to experiment with color and value as well as mixing prints.

There are lots of methods for sewing flying geese, which are a favorite of quilt makers old and new…it seems this unit appears in some form in many different patterns. My favorite, and quickest, method when sewing a lot of flying geese units (this also works great for adding triangle corners to squares, such as in the Snowball block) is marking my machine with tape. I’ll show you:

Use a ruler to extend the line from your needle straight out toward you on the floor of your machine. Place a piece of washi tape, or masking tape, to mark that line (you could use a marker, but the tape is easy to remove), as shown above.

Place the square fabric (the piece that will be a “sky” triangle) right sides facing your “goose” fabric. Place the fabric under the presser foot, lining up the corner directly under the needle (see above).  Align the opposite corner (the one closest to you, in foreground above) with the edge of the tape.

*tip: when sewing units like this, always start on a broad side of the fabric rather than a corner, i.e. you wouldn’t want to turn this piece around and start at the corner and sew toward the center of the rectangle.

As you sew diagonally across the fabric, keep the near corner aligned with the edge of the tape. This helps you sew a straight seam without marking the fabric. You can chain-sew lots of units pretty quickly this way.

This coming week, I will post four more blocks with flying geese and how to make each one. To see the other blocks I have designed to accompany the Tula Book blocks, visit my “super simple sampler” page. Each month has been a different shape theme.

Happy Sewing,

Sharon

linking with Lee for WIP Wednesday…she has  a giveaway today so head over!