Flying Geese Quilt:
Our local quilt guild has an annual judged quilt show and
this year the block theme was flying geese.
There are many ways to sew these blocks, sew triangles, rectangle and
squares, one seam, no waste (four blocks at a time), etc. Making 4 at a time is my favorite, but was
not appropriate for this project. I
wanted to use up some of the pieces from my scrap bag (they were peeking over
the top of the bag) and my blocks were a finished 2” x 1”. So I tried the one seam method. After working out a few bugs, I really like
this method and my finished produce looks really good.
For my finished 3" x 1 1/2" goose, I started with two 2" x 2" sky (background) and one 3 1/2" x 2" goose. The goose fabric is folded wrong sides together with the fold on the top. Sew the 1/4" seam on the right side of the block. Were the wooden stick is placed.
My first attempt with the one seam technique produced a
great block; however the 1/4” seam allowance on the top of the top of the block
was not perfect, or even near perfect.
So instead of making my planned finished 3” x 1 1/2” block, it became a
2” x 1”. My problem was the top square
wanted to shift slightly when I sewed the one seam. If I placed the block slightly above the
bottom block, I had great success with the top edge being straight. My need for nicely trimmed blocks led to all
of the blocks being cut to the small size.
To keep the goose from shifting, I sewed a 1/4" stabilizing seam. Due to this seam, quilting was somewhat
difficult. The sewing machine pressure
foot kept getting caught on the little “lip” of the goose stabilizing
seam. I ended up using a water solvable
stabilizer on the top of the quilt. It
worked great! I will definitely keep
this product close by for future use.