Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a fun quilt for you today. This is a one of those quilts that takes an ordinary block and just makes it a little Ooh, Ahh! So let’s take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this great? This is your block we’re making right here. And it’s got your four flying geese. And they’re kind of half and half. So let me show you how to make this. To make this quilt what you’re going to need is one roll of 2 ½ inch strips. And we have used Walking on Sunshine by JoAnn Porter from Wilmington. And of course it’s blue and yellow so it’s one of my favorites. You’re also going to need, for your background you’re going to need a yard and ¾ . That’s going to take care of all of your geese and your inner border. That outer border you’re going to need a yard and a half. And it’s a six inch border we’ve got on there. And for your back, look how pretty that is. For your back you’re going to need 4 yards. And so it just makes a great quilt. It’s 63 by 63. So let me show you how to do this.

Ok so to make this quilt we’re going to take our cut strips and we are going to sub cut them. And I’m choosing two colors that are contrasting. And I’ve got a yellow one here and a blue one. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to, I like to stack them because you get more cuts every time you do it. And it’s less work. So what we’re going to do is we are going to take our strips and we’re going to cut two 8 ½ inch pieces. And so right now I’m just going to cut these selvedges right here. Trim those off. And then I’m going to count over 8 ½. Now because my strips are folded in half I’m going to get two every time I cut. So I’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and a half. We’ll bring our little ruler over here. And we’re going to cut two 8 ½ out of each strip and then eight 2 ½. So we’re just going to take our little 2 ½ inch ruler. We can line it up along the edge. And we’ve got two, four, six, eight, just like that. And so we’re going to stack those up. And this is extra over here. And we are going to save our strips right here.

So then what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our background pieces and these are 2 ½ inch strips so you can use pre cut strips if you want. You’ll only need 16 though. So that’s why we chose yardage. And our yardage is, our background is a yard and ¾ and we’re just cutting them out of that. And you’re going to cut 16 of them. So out of this what you’re going to need is, this is your geese body, so it’s your rectangles. So you’re going to need 2 ½ inch by 4 ½ inch rectangles. So ours is already cut at 2 ½ inches wide. And what we’re going to do is we’re just going to come back along here and we’re going to cut our rectangles 4 ½ inches. So we’re going to count over one, two, three, four, and a half like this. And set those aside. And we’ve got one, two, three, four, our half is at the beginning so we’re good. And then we’re going to cut that. And that’s just extra also. So, so you’re going to do that to all 16 of your strips and that makes the body of them.

Now to make this we’re going to take four of these. It takes four of these blocks to make a block. Four of these rectangles to make a block. And then we’re going to take four of our 2 ½ inch squares and we are going to geese them. You know, snowball them or you know, sew them side to side on each side. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to lay these on here like this. And then we’re going to go to the sewing machine and we are going to sew these from the middle out. Just like that. And that’s going to make one side of our geese. And we’re going to do them one after the other. Now if you’re not confident sewing this line, draw the line or iron a line, do something so that you have a mark from side to side. Otherwise you can just snowball it and come straight out from sides. And we’re going to do this to all four of these. So I’m going to take these to the sewing machine and do that. Just like that.

And I’m just going to come from my middle out this way. Line up my needle. Make sure I’ve got my foot where I can get it. And we’re going to sew right down the center of that. What we’re going to do with these is we are going to chain piece them. So I’m just going to line, keep lining them up like this. And one more and one more. There we go. Alright. So now we’re going to clip these apart and trim them off. So I’m just going to use my rotary cutter and clip this extra thread right here. And then clip in between my threads right here. Now I’m going to turn these and I’m going to just lay my ruler about a quarter of an inch on the other side. And trim all these geese off like this. Make sure, sometimes if you use the same color thread, sometimes it’s a little hard to see. And you want to make sure you don’t cut your stitches. Now when we cut these strips, that actually makes enough for two blocks. So you can see I still have four more of these left and that will go to the next block that I want to make. And then on this side, oop we’ve got to iron. We’ve got to go ahead and press our little things back over here. And you want to do one side at a time because you want to make sure that the next square you put on kind of criss crosses over that top right there to give you that point. So I’m just pressing these back, just like that.

Now we’re going to go across here and we’re going to do the same thing. We’re going to lay these back out. And we’re going to lay our yellow square on the other side. Just like this. And again we’re just going to sew from side to side on each block. And we’re going to run these over to the sewing machine and chain piece those. Alright so again we’re going to trim these open. I mean trim the, cut the threads in between. Then we’re going to trim off our sides. And again make sure you cut the right side off, the outer corner is the direction you’re going. This is such a fun block. Alright, here we go. One more. Alright now we’ve got to iron these open. And we’re just going to bring them over here. I’m going to get rid of some of this stuff. Kind of set our seams. We’ll set the whole pile, roll them back. Have a little, make sure there’s no folds in there. That one kind of had a little bitty fold.

Ok so now what we’re doing is we’re going to line these up just like this and sew these together, a whole row of four. So we make this whole middle block. And what we want to do when we put them together is we want to sew from this side so that we can make sure that we don’t lose our points. Right here where the thread criss crosses, as long as we stay on the seam side of that criss cross you will never lose your point. So sew with your point facing you so you can see where you’re going. Come along this edge and right where that thread criss crosses, you either want to go right in that spot, or on this side of it. On the seam side of it and you’ll never lose that point right there. I hope you can see those two stitch lines. Because that is a handy, handy tip for never losing your point.  And I’ve sew those two and I’m going to sew these two. We’ll sew two and two and then we’ll sew four. Making sure these line up. Now I’ll be honest with you there have been a few times I haven’t wanted to lose my point and so I’ve sewn my seam and just come in a little to make sure that I didn’t lose that point. You know, and you know it all gets worked out in the end but you’ve just got to be careful if you want to keep those points, that’s a little tip to make sure that you do. Alright I’m lining this up so I can sew it down. And watching my point. Alright.

Now the body of our block is sewn together and we are going to press that all flat. And I’m just going to press from the top first. Make sure it’s nice and flat. And then I’m going to come to the back and I’m just going to roll those seams all going one direction. Now what we’re going to do is straighten that out a little bit. And see how this goes in and out a little bit, that won’t matter because we’ll catch that in that seam. But what we’re going to do now is we’re going to put one strip on this side and one strip on this side. And that’s going to make our block. So let’s go ahead and go to the sewing machine over here and sew these side strips on. And I’m just laying my side piece on here, making sure they match up top to bottom and I’m just going to sail down the side. I’m going to flip it around now and come down the other side with our matching strip. These are matching strips you’re  putting on. And because your strip edges are, you know are pre cut, they’re going to be a better bet to follow if you need to follow a line. We’re just going to iron this back now. And take a look at that. There’s your block.
So now the way we set ours and of course there’s lots of ways to set them, but the way we set ours was we turned them and rotated them. So you know we’ve got one going one way, one going this way. And then we just keep doing that like this, up and down. When we get to the next row we’re going to start it going the other direction. So let’s look at the quilt so we can make sure we know what’s happening here. We have one, two, three, four, five, six blocks across here. And we have going this way up, this way up and this way up. Do you see? Then the next row, we start going up and over, up and over, up and over. So we’ve got six across by six down. I had such a fun time making these. It’s a really cute block. It’s a great way to make a little flying geese a little more Ooh, Ahh! And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on Flying Home from the MSQC.