Flying Geese + Rail Fence Quilt

A good friend of mine gave me a stack of fat quarters recently. The fabrics were mostly beige and brown with some red and green accents. There was a single “surprise” fat quarter with cowboys herding cattle on the prairie in the stack! That presented a great challenge.

I decided it would make a fun comfort quilt for a child in a daycare. So I dove into my stash and found the three red and green checkered fabrics and the green polka dots to augment the set.

I designed this pattern. I wanted to accent the cowboys and maximize the use of the fabrics in the fat quarters. I mixed 12 inch (finished) flying geese blocks with 12 inch rail fence blocks.

The cowboys were fussy cut at 6 1/2 inches, the flying geese blocks are 6 1/2 inches, and the corner blocks were cut at 3 1/2 inches. These are are the unfinished measurements.

The strips for the rails were all cut a 3 1/2 inches x 12 1/2 inches, unfinished.

The center block in the quilt is a 4 patch (cut at 3 1/2 inches) and the flying geese are set to form a star. I used the four patch block because that’s all the cowboy fabric I had left after I fussy cut the 4 large patches! For the 4 large cowboy blocks, I turned the flying geese to form a “window” (forming a square in a square) to highlight the feature fabric. It was fun setting the flying geese blocks two different ways in this quilt.

The quilt went together really quickly. When I finished it, it just seemed a bit long for it’s width. So I trimmed off about 2 1/2 inches from the two narrow ends of the quilt. The only fabric I needed to purchase was the backing, which I also used as the binding.

I really like this design and would happily use it to make other quilts.

"Early Birds" Low Volume Fabrics in a Modern Flying Geese Quilt

I put my "Snow Melt" quilt aside to work on a sample quilt for a class I teach at my local quilt (and yarn) shop, JP Knit & Stitch.   I had seen the Cloud 9 "YoYogi Park" fabrics designed by Heather Moore of Skinny la Minx in the shop and thought it would be fun to use them in the quilt. Genevieve, the shop owner, agreed.  

I chose the grey and white "Peeking Birds" first, then the deep teal and light aqua fabrics from the same line.  Genevieve wanted yellow in the quilt so I added the yellow from Carolyn Freidlander's "Doe" line from RobertKaufman.com.  She picked the bright orange and white floral fabric ("Nobi" from Alexander Henry) for the back!

All of the fabrics on the front of the quilt meet the criteria for Low Volume Fabrics.  (See my post from 3/19/2015).  This quilt has a lot of negative space.  I'd made a quilt using this design once before and that time chose two light solids in the negative space. It's an entirely different quilt using all low volume fabrics. 

I like both quilts. Each has a unique character.  

I usually try to put a solid in a quilt with a lot of print fabrics to give the eye a place to rest. Up close this quilt is busy.  At a distance, the flying geese blocks read as solids while the pattern in negative space in the background seems much more dominant. That's really interesting. 

I really enjoyed making this quilt.  I had recently listened to Abby Glassenberg's great podcast with Heather Moore.  Heather lives in Cape Town, South Africa.  It's unlikely I'd ever meet her or go to her shop, but it was fun to hear Heather talk about designing fabrics.  The Internet really can make Half-a-world-away feel like Right-next-door!

There are still a couple places in my class, Beyond Beginner Quilting, at JP Knit & Stitch if you'd like to join us!  The class starts Saturday, May 2, 2015. 

Quilting straight lines

Finish It February is underway. I'm currently working on the royal blue flying geese lap quilt.  It's so modern, that quilting using straight lines using my walking foot felt like the best match for most of the quilt. Here are some photos of my quilting.

Echo stitching the "geese" in the flying geese blocks

I like to use painter's tape for straight line quilting over areas with negative space, especially if I am quilting diagonally. It's easy to apply, it stays in place and can be used several times before it gets too linty to stick well, and it doesn't leave a glue residue when removed.  The painter's tape in the photos is 1 inch wide. When I stitch, I keep the inner edge of my walking foot right at the edge of the painter's tape. It's easy to follow as I sew and it keeps me from sewing over the tape.  

If I have a stitch line that I want to follow but I want the distance between rows of stitching to be more than 1 inch, I use the metal guide bar on the walking foot.  The bar runs right over the line of stitches.  The line of stitching you get is only as good as the row of stitching you are following. Daydreaming isn't advised!

Using the guide bar on the walking foot

I used the wavy serpentine stitch on the blue and yellow strips in the quilt.  It's stitch #4 on my Bernina and I increase the length to 25 to get a wider wave and I use the walking foot.

This quilt is almost done.  I'm still thinking about how to quilt the small flying geese blocks. 

Quilt number two has top, backing and batting all set to sandwich!  Hopefully I'll get that done today. 

Flying Geese Quilt with African Wax Fabrics--WIP

This flying geese quilt is something I started in the fall.  There was no urgency to complete it so it went to the bottom of the pile when I started working on Christmas quilts. 

This past week, I had a sweet dog friend visiting for a few days. I'm going to call her my "Organizing Assistant Dog."  Maggie isn't as young as she used to be and is a lot slower going up stairs.  So I tried to arrange my activities to keep us on the first floor of the house as much as possible.  My quilting room is on the second floor, so I looked around for projects to work on downstairs.  Thanks to Maggie, I got some bins of scraps sorted, the dining room work area tidied up and I got this quilt top finished. 

Maggie, my Organizing Assistant Dog.  You can see by her intent look that she is keeping me on task!!

I already had the flying geese blocks done.  Since all the precision sewing was completed, I was happy to use my light weight traveling sewing machine to sew the quilt together. 

The quilt is all improv.  I had some ideas about the background but not a planned design. The yellow, blue and orange are colors in the African Wax fabrics.  The yellow and orange are on the opposite side of the color wheel from the royal blue, making them bold accents.  There is nothing subtle about this quilt but I really like design and the way it came together.   

Thanks, Maggie!

Modern Flying Geese: Completed Quilts using 3 of 5 variations

So far I have made 3 of the 5 variations shown in my Modern Flying Geese pattern.  Here they are:

Left to Right:  Lion in a square--open diamonds, Study in Melon--closed diamonds, Fox and Geese

At the moment, I'm partial to the Fox and Geese version. But that may be because it is the quilt I just completed. Or it maybe because this is the color scheme my mother, a professional interior designer who was a participant-in and devotee-to Mid-Century Modern, used in a house my father built in the early 1950s.  The use of turquoise and yellow-green with accents of grey and navy seemed very avant guard to me at the time! 

I quilted Fox and Geese with the walking foot on my domestic sewing machine.  Here are two details of the quilting.

I used painter's tape to mark the first the row in the upside down V, top left in the photos.  Then I used my line of stitching as my guide for the subsequent rows.  When I reached the top of the triangle in the center of the bright green block, I had drifted to the left approximately 1/4 inch.   If I were doing it again, I would draw a line with dressmaker's chalk, or other removable marking, from the center of the top block to the point of the inner triangle in the green block.  That would have given me a clear pivot point and my stitching could have stayed in alignment. That's how I marked my Modern Hexagon Quilt.  

Here's one last photo. This is my English Springer Spaniel, Tipper, showing off the text fabric on the back of the quilt. He likes to pose in my quilt photos!

Modern Flying Geese: Variation 4, Work in Progress

I'm starting to work on one more quilt which is variation of my Modern Flying Geese with Variations pattern. Version 4 is probably the most consistent with Modern Aesthetics of the five variations in my  pattern. 

I'm using a mix of fabric lines:  Carolyn Friedlander's Line "Botanics", coordinating Kona cottons assembled by fabricBUBB on Etsy, Art Gallery "Gramercy Park" by Leah Duncan and an assortment of cream fabrics with low volume prints.  (The collection of Kona's is so beautiful I would have wanted it even if I hadn't been collecting fabrics in the "Botanics" line). 

The pairs of flying geese in the quilt float in negative space.  I'm thinking I might make this quilt larger than the 40 x 52 size in the pattern.  I think more negative space will be a good thing...and make the quilt more cuddly too!

The flying geese are done and the background is cut out.  Quilt assembly is pending!

Modern Flying Geese: Variation 4

From other blogs:

Have you seen Abby Glassenberg's post about "How Much Fabric Designers Earn--an inside look" on her blog, While she Naps?   If you buy fabric or are fans of particular fabric designers, Abby's post from November 3, 2014 is a must read.  Once again Abby has written an amazing piece based on excellent research.  Take a few minutes to read the comments at the end of the post.  They are really interesting too.

Tomorrow Abby is posting a piece on designing fabrics for Joann's Fabrics.  I know it is going to be fascinating reading!