Flying Geese

The Badger quilt that I am working on has a lot of flying geese units.  I have not made a quilt that uses so many of these units, and the few flying geese I have made have most likely been paper pieced.  But for this quilt, I need 80 flying geese units.  I didn't want to paper piece that many.  I looked at all the way to make flying geese, and decided on this method, that makes 4 at a time.  Using the directions and the cheat sheet below, I whipped these units out quite quickly with chain piecing.

 

Chain piecing the Flying Geese

I want to stress that I did not use the method of making flying geese shown on the cheat sheet.  I ONLY used the size measurements for cutting SQUARES!  I  did not cut any triangles to make these units.  My unfinished flying geese unit measured 2.5 x 4.5".  I started with a 5.25" red square, and four 3" gray squares.  After doing all the steps in the directions (first set of directions), I had four flying geese units.  I only used the MEASUREMENTS found in the cheat sheet. The only difference is that the cheat sheet says to use 3" squares, the directions say the squares should be 2 7/8.  Only an eighth of an inch difference.  Now if you sew like me, you'd take that eighth of an inch!  My quarter inch seam allowance is still shaky, although I'm getting more and more accurate.  Still, I'd rather make a unit larger and trim it down, rather than risk it being too small. 

These directions and the 3" square produced surprisingly accurate flying geese units.  When I trimmed and squared the units, very little scraps were left.  Here are the trimmings left over after I trimmed the units.  Hardly anything, especially considering I trimmed 80 flying geese!!  On some units, all I had to do was snip off the dog ears!  I was glad for that fudge factor eighth of an inch because some of my sewing was wonky, but not too many.

Also, I used a specialty ruler I bought long long ago and never used.  It's the Wing Clipper for trimming up flying geese, and boy did it work well!  I would highly recommend this ruler if you love flying geese units or need to make a lot of them.  It's super easy to use and makes 10 different sized flying geese.

Anyway, my flying geese will be sewn to my twice-framed Bucky Badger star centers, and I'll have 20 stars ready to go!