Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a fun project for you today involving flying geese. Let’s take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this fun? They’re all heading home. They’re all heading home. So we’re calling this Take Flight. And it’s made out of little geese. And it’s just a really cute and easy pattern. And let me show you how to make it. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is two packs of five inch squares. And we have used Royal Nights by Wilmington Essentials for Wilmington. And it’s just a beautiful line. You can see. We used this outer border out here. It is a nice six inch border. And we used a yard and a half for it. The backing is 2 ½ yards of 90 inch wide fabric. And it’s just a beautiful purple. And then you need some background fabric. For the background, you’re going to need 3 ¾ yards. And it’s going to take care of all of these pieces and your geese pieces as well. So let me show you how to do this.

So to make this what you’re going to do is you’re going to take your background and you’re going to cut some five inch squares. And you’re going to take one of your charm squares right here. You’re going to put them right sides together like this. And just like I like to do we’re going to sew all the way around the outside edge. And we’re going to go to the sewing machine and do that right now. This is a fun way to make half square triangles and it’s a great way to make flying geese. And if you want to go to the corner, people ask me this all the time. Should I stop a quarter of an inch or should I sew off the edge? You can do either one. It really doesn’t matter. Either one works. And you know sometimes I get going so fast that I sew right off the edge. I had to rethread my needle right there. And just like that I was going so fast I couldn’t stop at my quarter of an inch. Alright we have sewn a quarter of an inch on all four sides. Now we’re going to take our little ruler, and these are handy these little 2 ½ inch rulers because they go edge to edge. And we’re going to cut it diagonally both directions like this. Just like this. Alright, then we’re going to come over here to the ironing board and we are going to iron these. And we’re going to lay them so that the dark side is up so that we can set the seam and roll it back. And this one block is actually going to give you two geese. So that’s kind of fun to know and handy as well. Alright.

So now we’re going to square these up. I don’t always square up but when I’m looking for a size you’ve got to square up. And I like this Block Lock ruler because it has this line right here and it just kind of wedges to the line. And we like that and so I’m going to line up the three inch mark on my, the edge of my quilt block. And I’m going to trim off that other side. One thing to remember on this I always get turned around a little bit, I always make sure the writing for the ruler is on the background side. And like sometimes people oh ask me a lot of questions about squaring up blocks. And so, so right here you can see this three inch line goes right across here but this one isn’t perfect. So that means I’m going to have to trim this like this and then I’m going to have to flip this around and just trim off that other side real, it will just be a little bit but it will be enough just so it makes it perfectly straight. There we go. And again I don’t always square up but sometimes, oop writing on the white. There we go. But sometimes it’s just really helpful in putting your block together. And one more here.
Alright, now what we’re going to do to make our geese, and I’m just going to brush this off down here, is we’re going to put our two colors together like this to make geese. We’re going to get two geese out of this. And so we’re going to go over to the sewing machine and sew these together. And I’m going to line them up just like that. And this is real easy thing to chain piece. There’s one and here’s the second one. Alright, now we’re going to iron these open. And you’re going to do this to two whole packs of four inch squares, or five inch squares. 84 of them. You’re going to make, oh I don’t know how many, a lot, you’re going to use them all. It’s math, that’s a math question. Alright. So we’re going to use these all. Then you’re going to, you’re going to sew these together in groups of four like this. And so I’m going to go ahead and add this one to the bottom of this. I’ve got the rest of these sewn together. And I’m going to add this one to the bottom. So we’re just going to lay these together and make sure a point comes to the bottom of the next geese. Otherwise you’ll have geese going in different directions. But you want it to come like this. The other trick on this is that right here wherever you have two threads that cross like this, you want to make sure that you come right at that point. And that will always keep your point perfect on your geese. Alright.

So you’re going to three of these per row. And you can see how this fits in right here. It goes here, here and here. You’re going to need three of those. Your background fabric piece is going to be this width which should be, let me measure, 5 ½ and it’s going to be 12 ½ inches long. So you’re going to cut some of those from your background. That are 5 ½ wide by 12 ½ long. And then we’re going to sew three of these together. Now I have a couple started here. So here’s my one and then we’re going to sew, we’re going to sew a geese unit and a background piece and a geese unit and a background piece. So let’s sew our next geese unit on here. And then we’re going to sew one more background piece. And I’m just going to sew this, you know everything I’m doing here is a quarter of an inch. There we go. And then one more geese unit. I mean one more background unit. So we have, we have three geese and three backgrounds like this. And again I’m going to flip this over so I can actually see where my lines cross so I don’t lose my point. Although if you lose a point you probably won’t notice. Alright let’s press these out. Well someone might notice but. You know I’ve never had anybody give a quilt back to me and say, if you could get these points perfect I’ll take that quilt. You know they’re just happy to have a quilt. Alright. So this is your row. Now how you determine the length, this is the fun part.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to take these two and I’m going to sew them together so they form a loop. So let’s go ahead and do that. And this is the fun part but this is what makes the movement of the quilt. Alright. So now we have this loop right here. And we’re just going to take this piece and we’re going to randomly cut it anywhere we want. And that’s going to determine our placement. See how these all go in different spaces. Now this first one right here. Take a note of this one right here. This first one we left open. It has no piece on either side. And so we just started it right there. But all the rest of these are cut at random intervals. So let me show you how I cut the random intervals. I just look at it. I decide where I want it. And I’m going to finger crease it right here like this. Just like this. And then I’m going to take my scissor and I’m just going to put it in here, let my blade catch that fold and cut it apart. And this is going to be the length this row is. So you just never quite know where they’re going to come out. And for me that’s part of the fun. Just part of the fun.

So I’ve got another row here. And I want to show you how these go together. And this one is also looped and so I’ll show you that cutting again. And I’m going to go all the way down here. Maybe just, just like maybe a, you know I don’t even know, maybe 3 ½ inch cut. But I’m going to finger crease it. And I’m just going to slide my scissor blade in there and cut it apart. And then when we go to set them up like this, oop you want to make them go in the same way. See this one is going to be just a little different. And so it gives them some movement as they go along. So what I did on mine when I put it out was I had two or three where I just left the, left this edge open so some started right on the edge. And I think, let’s see, yes I have one, two, three of those that just started on that edge. The other ones are all shifting around. And I have to say when I put mine up on my board that I moved them around to get the look of the movement that I wanted. But it’s so freeing to not have to measure a piece. To just sew three things and then just make a cut and put them different places. And so this was really fun to make and really enjoyable. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Take Flight quilt from the MSQC.