Background of Flowers & Tumblers quilt:
FLOWERS & TUMBLERS (or scraps are taking over my world) part 3 – I have been trying to use only scraps to make quilts this year. I am making a dent in the scrap bins – finally.

For FLOWERS & TUMBLERS (or scraps are taking over my world) part 3 I was inspired by a row quilt that I hand quilted for a customer this past summer. I thought that some sort of row or section quilt would be fun. See previous posts:

Part 1

Part 2

Once the sections of tumblers and flowers were complete, I added 2.5″ strips of lightweight denim sashing around the sections. Now to come up with a border.

What to do about a final border? I decided on Flying Geese. So maybe I should change the name of the quilt from Flowers & Tumblers….No, I like the name…. I wanted big geese so started with 9″ squares that I will mark down the center diagonally and then sew the foot width from each side of the line.  Those will be cut apart on the pencil line, turned and sewn together as geese.  The advantage of this method is that there is no stretchy side to deal with and they can be made any size.

I sewed 20 big geese blocks, but I wasn’t thinking about how each goose is 2 blocks so after sewing the geese together, I realized they were way too big (um….ever heard of measure twice and cut once?) so I just went thru the scrap bin again and pulled out scraps to cut 5″ squares that sewn together as geese will make 9.5″ geese (the correct width for this project).

How to make the flying geese for the border

I cut 5″ squares of white or cream muslin and cut 5″ squares of various scraps. Just FYI – making geese this way allows you to make the geese any size you want for any project.

I drew a line from corner to corner on the light-colored squares with a pencil. This line will allow me to sew a straight line beside it and use the marked line as the cutting line for a half square triangle (HST).

My sewing foot is just a little bit wider than a quarter inch and I use it consistently for all my block sewing. Whether you use a quarter inch seam, or something a scant bigger or smaller – be consistent.

Below are the sewn blocks all ready to be cut apart and be ironed. I assembly line sew the geese all one way along the drawn line, and then sew them the other way. Here is the long line of blocks all sewn on both sides of the line.

Once I have sewn on both sides of the drawn line, then I cut the geese apart, so they look like below. Now they are ready to be cut on the drawn line and ironed.

See below that the blocks are ironed and stacked by twos so I can match them and complete the “geese”.

Here are two sewn geese. They are ironed and ready to go into a row.

I sewed the geese together in pairs of 2, then those into pairs of 4, etc until I had the border the length I wanted.

And that is how I make HST geese. It is time consumptive, and I have no doubt others have methods that work just as well for them, but this is what works for me.

I came up a few geese short, so I added white fabric to the borders to take up that space. I just wanted to be done with this quilt and move on to another one. Who says that the geese actually have to go all the way around the quilt border anyway?

Here is the PDF pattern for the exact size tumbler and hexagon I used:

I did some of this quilt while on a quilt retreat in northern Maine, see here for post about that.

What about the other Flying Geese blocks that were too big?

As for the blocks that are now complete but too big for this project, they are in the shoe box with the left-over tumblers from this quilt.  Maybe the next scrap quilt is already started.  I am visualizing a whole bunch of section quilts to use up the scraps.

I am already planning……

What happens once the scraps are under control? At that point, I get to make a planned quilt.  I have an idea for one that will be Christmas themed. On hand, I have a black and white Paris themed fabric and if I combine it with red and green Christmas prints, I can make a quilt dedicated to my trip to Paris at Christmas in 1985.  My mind is already wandering to other possibilities……..

Those scraps…

FLOWERS & TUMBLERS (or scraps are taking over my world) part 3 has been an enjoyable project. Please have fun with your scraps. They are not a bother, or a waste, but a wonderful resource for trying new quilt projects. Enjoy the process.

PLEASE NOTE: 
ALL PHOTOS AND WRITTEN CONTENT ARE MY OWN UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.