When I made that first flying geese block yesterday, I was trying to be very careful.
Usually when I paper piece, I just take a huge chunk of fabric, and wind up with a lot of waste. In this Alex Anderson book, she has you cut the fabric ahead of time. That could be useful, but my experience is that when directions have you do that, they are pretty stingy with the dimensions. I need lots of slop room when I paper piece.
I enlarged the pattern, but didn't take that into account when cutting the fabric. Don't ask me why. (Maybe because I did those tasks on different days.) Anyhow, good thing I only cut enough for one block. But it worked out fine - instead of cutting squares into four triangles, I cut them into two. Voila - just the right amount of extra. Whew!
I'd like the other blocks to go faster, so today I cut out all the fabric. Instead of making one block at a time, I'll sew the same seam on all twelve blocks, then trim that seam to 1/4" on all twelve, then press all twelve, then sew the next seam.
That ought to make these geese fly.
I made the right choice in going with a paper-pieced block for flying geese.
Just perfect.
I decided to keep all the geese white and use five different colored fabrics for the background. One down, twelve to go.
I never did start that lamp mini quilt. I've been doing lots of outside projects this summer instead of sewing and blogging. And every time I thought about that lamp pattern, I realized it no longer held my interest.
But now I feel like sewing again, so what will I work on?
You see that pattern in the lower left? I picked fabric for it a couple of months ago, so I decided that would be a good project. You see how it says "sew simple" at the top? And "triple easy" at the bottom?
After I (tried to) read the directions, I was reminded of the "hilarious" label that gets slapped on comedy DVDs. I have yet to watch one described as hilarious that came close to the build up. So when I see that word on a DVD, I'm not fooled. And when I see "simple" on a pattern, I feel the same way.
Their way of making one-seam flying geese was too complicated for me. Plus the block was too big, and I'm mathematically challenged when it comes to resizing blocks.
Segue to Plan B. You see the nice smiley Alex Anderson book? She has a perfect (for me) flying geese paper pieced pattern. I'm going to enlarge it a little bit after I scan it. Then I'll use the setting from the Sew Simple Patterns, or a variation on it. Voila - hybrid geese.
This is my focus fabric, which I'll use for the large solid rectangles.
These are the other fabrics. Right now, I plan on white geese, with the colored fabrics as background. I suppose I should try one with a white background and colored geese. Come to think about it, why couldn't I mix it up and use both? Then I'd really have some hybrid geese.
