Flying Geese

January 6, 2021 at 7:05 pm | Posted in Patchwork | Leave a comment

For my current (secret) project, I’m making rather a lot of Flying Geese blocks. Since I like to be efficient in my sewing, I looked up ways to make the blocks without waste and with as little fuss as possible. I settled on this tutorial. It’s a nice and efficient way to make the blocks four at a time, which is exactly what I needed.

While doing a trial block, I noticed I had rather a lot of overlap in the middle when laying out my white squares on top of the blue one:

The original tutorial doesn’t have quite as big an overlap, but the reason this happens is that I like to make blocks like this a bit bigger than needed, in order to be able to properly square them up later. So I asked myself whether I really need that overlapping fabric? Turns out I don’t, since the vertical line I drew on the white fabric shows where the second cutting line will be in the end, the first one being the horizontal line drawn in. Anything going over that vertical line to the other side will end up creating unnecessary bulk without any function, so I decided to go ahead and cut those corners off:

After sewing to the left and right of the horizontal line, cutting in the middle and ironing, this is where we are:

The second cutting line will now be a vertical right down the middle, where the white fabric doesn’t overlap and add bulk. Here’s the four blocks after sewing the remaining two white squares on, cutting and pressing:

Those obviously still need squaring up – if anybody is interested in how I go about that with this kind of block, let me know!

I think adding those two small cuts at the beginning helps making the whole process easier at the end, and I’m always for avoiding unnecessary bulk. I was surprised at first that I just could do away with the overlap, but thinking about where my sewing and cutting lines will be made it clear that there would be no problems with doing that, and my trial blocks confirmed that.