These Geese Are Flying!

I am still avoiding the quilting on my niece Naomi's quilt. Actually, when I looked at it yesterday I couldn't find the bad bits of stitching that were bothering me. It doesn't mean that they aren't there, just that, maybe, they aren't as noticeable as I thought. So, I will get it finished before her wedding in the new year.

What I HAVE been doing is making the flying geese for my Ohio star quilt. I am lucky enough to have a very kind and thoughtful mother and whilst browsing on Amazon recently she saw this and thought of me!..

Isn't it lovely!

I have been following Bonnie Hunter's wonderful Quiltville blog for donkey's years now, if you haven't seen it yet, you MUST. When you have finished here. She has a wonderful scrap user's system and gives lots of beautiful free patterns, she writes brilliant books and runs Quilt Cam on youtube, a sort of sew along thing that is great to have on in the background while you sew.

Anyway, a lot of Bonnie's quilt patterns use the EZ Angle and EZ Companion rulers but to buy both of these you would be looking at spending about £30! That is the cost of a whole Jelly Roll or Layer Cake! So, I thought about it and bought fabric instead. Then my mum called and told me that she had bought me a flying geese ruler and a Tri Recs set of rulers (more on that another time) and they would be arriving the next day. How great is my mum? Pretty great! I hadn't mentioned these rulers to her but she saw a print out of one of Bonnie's patterns on my window sill and went home to order me the rulers. She couldn't remember which rulers they were & thought she had bought the wrong ones.

It turns out that the EZ Flying Geese ruler is, in my opinion, even better than the EZ Angle and Companion rulers. Because of the markings you only need ONE RULER! It makes geese from 1.5" x 3" to 6" x 12" and you can make QSTs with it, probably HSTs too.

 

You cut your geese pieces from strips. I am using 2.5" strips to make 2" x 4" finished size geese. You cut the middle (goose) part using side A, which has purple markings and the side parts using side B, which has blue markings. There are notches that align with the top of your strip and these help with positioning your fabric when you sew.

 

I need to make 144 geese units and sew them into 24 sets of 6. I spent a couple of hours pressing fabric and cutting and I sewed on and off all day yesterday. I nearly have all of my geese sewn, only 35 to go!

 

I plan to have these chasing around my Ohio stars.

 

Keep it scrappy! Abi