Project Pinterest: Flying North Quilt

I go through phases of obsession with different quilt designs… remember my ode to Half Square Triangles? Lately I’ve been all about flying geese. I guess I’ve experimented before – remember my wonky tree ornaments? (I still love those little things.) I’ve been pinning all sorts of flying geese quilts, and here are some of my favorites:

Eventually I stumbled on this flying geese block on a blog and had to pin it… and then I couldn’t rest until I got started!

Flying North Quilt

Finished Size: 40″ x 48″

I decided to go with a cool palette of greens, blues, and purples with grey as my neutral. Each block calls for six 2×3 geese and eight 4×6 geese. Sometimes (most of the time) I don’t feel like bothering with the math part, so I just pulled some fabric and started cutting. I really like this tutorial for making flying geese – all four different techniques in one place, with lots of measurements already worked out for you. I still like the Four-at-a-time method the best, the same one I learned a couple years ago.

The Amateur Librarian // Flying North Quilt

My ironing station… works better than an ironing board!

I made a whole bunch of flying geese, then counted to see how many I had… and I made way too many. More is always a happy mistake, though – I’m sure I’ll use them up eventually!

I used my dinky “design wall” to play around with the arrangement. (Air quotes necessary until I put up something more legit… But really, even though I make fun of my poor piece of batting thumb tacked to the wall, it’s so helpful for taking a step back and looking at a project in progress.)

I made a pieced back with some leftover geese and a few panels of fabric used in the quilt top. The blocks are pretty big at 16″ so I only made four, and decided to add borders. First a narrow strip of navy, then a wider strip of grey. I added a few leftover geese to the grey border, which I really like. (Reminds me of the borders on my Modern Wedding Quilt.)

I used the geese in the borders as a guide for a loose grid. I’m trying to experiment a bit more with my straight line quilting, so I like that it’s not the same grid I do all the time and a bit off-center.

I’m still working on getting better at binding. This time I used pre-made double folded binding tape… love it! It’s so much quicker and turned out perfectly. I don’t mind making binding, but it was nice to skip a step and it worked out really well. I liked this Youtube tutorial, if you’ve never used it before (like me!).

I like these flying geese so much that I switched out my Hillside Houses in the living room so my geese can have their day in the sun. Still loving the no-sew quilt hanger! I’ve been calling this quilt “Flying North” in my head all along, I guess because of the cool colors, so that’s the name!