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<\/p>\nI hate waste. I find that a lot of quilting is taking a bigger piece of fabric and cutting it down an getting something smaller in the end. I can deal with that – it just makes sense. What you get is much nicer than you start out with. What I have a problem with is that sometimes parts of the fabric wind up as little pieces that are left on the floor that I can’t use. It drives me crazy. I find myself looking over that fabric a lot like Gollum from Lord of the Rings – My precious…. I save it all and I hope to do something with it eventually.<\/p>\n
The way that I use to make flying geese was to take a rectangle of fabric and sew 2 squares on it, diagonally, and cut off the part that wasn’t needed. Don’t get me wrong, I keep all those little pieces of fabric and I make half square triangles out of them, but so far, they are just sitting in a bag, waiting for me to play with them. It just seemed so wrong.<\/p>\n
That’s all in the past (or at least mostly in the past). I have found a new way to make flying geese that no longer leaves any leftover fabric. And even more amazing, it’s so much faster that my old way of making them.<\/p>\n
I didn’t come up with this myself – people that are far smarter than me did. I’ve seen it on a few websites, so I’m not sure who to attribute it to, but I want to say a big thank you to whoever did! In case you haven’t been introduced to this method yet, I thought I’d share it with you.<\/p>\n
Add 1 1\/4″ to the size that you want your flying geese to be. If you want the geese to be 5 inches, cut your square (main color) 6 1\/4″.<\/p>\n
For the background fabric, add 7\/8″ to the the finished height of the geese. In this case it would be 2 1\/2″ + 7\/8″ = 3 5\/8″.<\/p>\n
For every one geese fabric you will need 4 background fabrics.<\/p>\n
That’s the hardest part of the whole thing. If you are still with me, the rest is easy peasy.<\/p>\n
Place background squares in opposite corners of the geese square. Pin and mark a line down the center of the squares.<\/p>\n
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Sew a quarter inch seam on each side of the marked line and cut on the line to separate into two halves.<\/p>\n
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Press the the seams to one side. Add the last squares of background fabric to the point of the triangle. Mark a center line and sew a quarter inch seam on each side of the line.<\/p>\n
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Cut down the center line and press open.<\/p>\n
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Viola! Just like that, you have 4 beautiful flying geese and no fabric waste.<\/p>\n
One thing that I need to point out about this method is that it only works for non-directional fabric. If yo want all your fabric to show up in the same direction, you’ll need to go back to the the old method.<\/p>\n
Originally I was making flying geese that I was going I to stack one on top of the other, but my I saw that my doggie prints were going to go every which way. After I made the geese, I changed the pattern.<\/p>\n
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My doggies are all lined up nicely, as they should be and they are playing well together.<\/p>\n
I hope that you enjoy making your geese as much as I enjoyed making mine!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hate waste. I find that a lot of quilting is taking a bigger piece of fabric and cutting it down an getting something smaller in the end. I can deal with that – it just makes sense. What you get is much nicer than you start out with. What I have a problem with … <\/p>\n