I started a new quilt, this one for my husband's aunt who turns 65 early in 2017 (she gave me two years notice about how much she might *wink wink* like a quilt for her big birthday). The pattern comes from Issue 13 of Love Quilting & Patchwork Magazine, a British publication that my husband got me a subscription to so I could stop stalking my local bookstore for the day the one or two copies came in with the "imported" magazines.
The quilt is mostly flying geese, which is fine, but the technique for making those flying geese is the 4-in-1 method which I have seen but never tried. I was a bit trepidatious but I went for it anyway.
If you have not seen this method before, I took pictures of each step so you could see what I mean by the alternative method.
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| Draw a line with pencil across the two small white squares. |
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| Sew 1/4" on either side of the line. |
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| Slice. |
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| Press. (They look really weird at this step. Like this will never work and what-have-I-done). |
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| Place another square and draw a line through the middle of that one, then sew on both sides again. |
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| Another slice. Here you can see that maybe this will work after all. |
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| Ta da! Here is a flying geese (goose?) unit after pressing. You end up with four. |
The method results in no waste, and that is fantastic considering how many stray HSTs I have floating around from various projects. The sizes also end up really accurate, which I wasn't so confident about. There do end up being a lot of bias edges and that is not ideal. I definitely found the method very efficient as the quilt top came together in no time flat.
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| Stacks of flying geese turn into... |
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| Initial layout of the quilt. |
I would say that IF the pattern I was following was designed for this method of making flying geese, I would do it again. But if not, the traditional method seems more reliable to me. Maybe I'm just too uncomfortable with innovation in this case?
Have you ever tried this method? What were your results?
Gorgeous! I've never tried that method for flying geese and likely wouldn't because of the bias edges. I'm glad it worked out for you.
ReplyDeleteI've tried this method before and it is efficient. But I am like you where I find it isn't as comfortable. And if you have a directional print, it's even worst. I actually bought the EZ Triangle ruler and that works perfectly for making flying geese with no waste. I had picked it up for a workshop but I saw the added bonus of being able to use it for Flying Geese with no waste of fabric :) Love the layout :)
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