Hi it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a great project for you today. We’re calling this Flying Geese Diamonds because this is based off of our three dimensional flying geese block. And we’ve just turned it and made it into diamonds. So I can hardly wait to show you. Let’s look at this quilt. Isn’t this great? This is, I love this fabric for one. I also love how we took all of the reds and put them vertically down the center. I mean it just gives it a whole different look. You know a lot of times we’re really concerned about mixing it all up. And it looked good that way too on my design wall. But when I went to sew it together we tried it like this and I was just like That’s it. That looks awesome.

So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one packet of ten inch squares of a print. And one packet of ten inch squares of a solid. That’s 42 squares in each. You’re also going to need a half a yard for this inner border and then a yard and a half for this outer border. We’ve chosen to put these deer on the back as well. They’re so cute with their little red noses. And it’s 4 ¾ yards of backing if you want it. And so let me just show you how to make this block because this is so much fun.

So what we’re going to do is we are going to take our background square and our print square. We are going to lay them right on top of each other like this. And we are going to cut a five by ten inch rectangle. So I’m going to lay my ruler right along the edge and just cut that. That gets set aside over here. Then we’re going to take this other half and we are going to cut this into two five inch squares. Just like this. Alright so now we have all of these and we’re going to swap out, we’re going to put our background with our color and our color with our background. Our five by ten inch pieces we are going to take over to the ironing board and iron them in half just like this, both of them, the long pieces. So here we go over to the ironing board. I’ve folded them in half, wrong sides together. And we’re just going to press, press that. Make sure we have a good press line on that.

Now making this block is just like making our traditional three dimensional flying geese. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to take this part that’s folded right here. The fold is at the top. We’re going to set it down about a quarter of an inch on our contrasting block. We’re going to put our two red squares together like that and sew a quarter of an inch down this side. We’re going to do the same thing with the opposite ones. So we’re going to take our five by ten inch piece here that’s folded. Put the fold at the top and set it a quarter of an inch down on the side like that. And put our other square on top and sew right down the side. So I’m going to do these at the same time. I’m just going to feed them through, just like that. And I’m just going to feed the next one right through as well. There we go.

Now what we’re going to do is we are going to make our flying geese. And unless you’ve forgot let me show you how fun this is. So we’re opening this up. And we’re going to press this back. But when we open this up, remember it makes that flying geese. It’s so cute like that. So let’s go to the ironing board and press that open. And I like to just make it nice and flat and then press it down. There’s one. And then this one we’re going to do the same thing. I’m going to kind of press this open and then fold this out, just like this. And there’s our little geese. You can line up to make sure your geese is centered right here. You can make sure that this fold line is lined up with your seam line down there. And that will make sure that it’s nice and centered. And we’re just going to press that down.

Alright once we get these pressed like this we’re going to flip them over and we’re going to trim off this back piece right here. Line it up with the bottom of your block and trim your geese off. So there’s that one, and then here’s this one. Alright, now what makes this block different is what we’re going to do is we’re going to go over to the sewing machine and we’re just going to fold back this edge right here. So we’re going to leave this straight right here, start sewing right here and then just curve this back so it makes a little curve. At the, at the widest point it’s going to be about a quarter of an inch. And we’re going to curve it to the top. So you’ll want to watch that real carefully when I do that because it’s kind of fun to see that happen.

So again I’m just going to lower my needle into this edge right here. And just put my needle down so it holds it. Then I’m going to lift my presser foot up and I’m just going to curve that edge. Because this square is on the bias it curves super easily. So I’m going to start stitching and I’m going to stitch right along that edge. And I’m going to go kind of slow. I know you’re shocked. I’m just going to go kind of slow right along that edge because this stitching is going to show so we want to make sure it looks nice. And sew right up to the top point. And then I’m just going to turn it and I’m going to come down the other side. And it’s ok if it overlaps a little bit at the top. Make sure it stays pulled across your square. And try to stay right along that edge. There we go. And I’ll set this over here. We’re going to do the same thing to the white one. And so we’re going to start a stitch in, lift up our presser foot and curve that side. And then just sew right along that edge. Now if you’re not perfect on this, I don’t think anybody is going to notice. You know, nobody, nobody is really looking at how perfect my seams are up on the wall, are you? You’re not looking at how perfect they are, are you? I hope not. They’re, they’re pretty good but you’ve just got to be careful. And go slow if you need to. Most, a lot of the machines will have a slow down stitch if you need to slow down for a minute you can do that. Alright, alright now let’s take a look at these. So you can see on this right here. Hey that’s not too bad. I did a stitch right along the edge. And it wobbles a little bit, but that’s alright. Just by curving that down it’s made, it’s given it a whole new look. And it’s also adhered it to the block.

So we did this on both. Now this is an interesting look right here, this little swag. But we’re talking about these diamonds right here, these flying geese diamonds. And so what we’re going to do now is we’re going to take this block and we’re going to sew them together. And when you get here in the middle, make sure your seams nest opposite ways because you’re now sewing through a bunch of fabric, quite a few layers. And so you just want to make sure that you have the least amount of bulk as you can. So you can see my seams are going opposite direction. This one goes this way, this one goes that way. And just going to line them up and sew them a quarter of an inch right down the side.  Make sure we’re lined up there. Alrighty, now we get to open it and press it. And see what happens.

Ha ha it came out pretty good. I’m always happy when I open it and it’s like, Oh it actually worked. Because sometimes you know you’re just not so sure. But generally it goes together pretty good. So this is the little block we’re getting right here. So when I set mine together the first thing I do on my design wall was I mixed all those reds in all over the place as I told you in the beginning. And then I wanted to see what it  would look like if I put all the reds in the center. And I really liked the look of that. So that’s what we went to.

Now when you’re laying this quilt out you’re just sewing square to square, just like this. And so there’s a couple of things you want to watch for. You want to watch to make sure, oh that we have color to color together and white to white together. So I need to change this up. So color to color and white to white like that. Now this is one of those that you seriously, I laid it out on my board. I probably did, you know, five or six different layouts of it. This is a really fun block because there’s all kinds of fun things you can do with it. But this is the way we’ve put it together. So we matched our, our whites and then our next block we matched our colors. So let’s look at this. We’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six across seven blocks down. That’s 42 total blocks. And I mean I just love how it works. I love how it looks. The quilters didn’t have any trouble quilting it, which I’m also glad to know. I mean it just makes a really fun block. And it’s so much easier than it looks. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Flying Geese Diamonds from the MSQC.