NIGHT FLIGHT (or a Flying Geese quilt)

Flying Geese is a well known and much loved block among quilters. The pattern is fairly easy to make and can be arranged in other ways beside the traditional Flying Geese quilts. I like darker backgrounds, and thought that “Night Flight” (or a Flying Geese quilt) was a good description of geese flying through a night sky.
According to some books in my personal library, this setting is called “Dutchman’s Puzzle”.

All the “geese” in this quilt are Jinny Beyers fabric that I had a stash of. Add solid black fabric for the background. I put a lot of hours into this quilt and it was finished from start to finish in 2008.
Making the “Geese”:
For this quilt, I started with 5″ squares. I drew a line diagonally and then sewed a generous quarter inch on each side of the line to make 2 half square triangle (HST) pieces that I matched and sewed up the center to make each “goose”. Yes this is a time consumptive, but I prefer the accuracy and less stretching of the triangles.
In order to put the design together, I simply laid the pieces out like a magazine photo I had seen.
I used to spend a lot of time working with triangles, but over the past 10 years or so I have gone to using the half square triangle method because of the accuracy, and the way triangles tend (for me at least) to really stretch out of shape, which is means a lot more squaring up to make the blocks fit.
When I show other quilters how to make these Flying Geese blocks, I use this method. The size can be adjusted easily to any size triangles desired.

Backing and Machine Quilting:
The backing is not a match to the front at all. In fact, I think it is a super ugly fabric (my own opinion). This fabric was on sale for a great price and is good quality cotton. Another plus is that it was on hand. The budget would not stretch enough to cover another back, and the machine quilting.

Finished size is 100″ square.
Machine quilting is an all over cloud design by RLM in July 2008.
Binding the quilt:
The binding is 2.5″ strips cut from the leftover Jinny Beyers fabrics. It is sewn into a long strip, and ironed in half (1.25″). I machine sewed the raw edge down on the front, flipped it over to the back and hand stitched down.
Here is another view of Night Flight (or a Flying Geese Quilt) completed. The black background makes the “geese” shine.

Challenge yourself:
Pick a simple pattern like this one, and adjust the size to what you would like to work with. Work through the pattern using the photo of the quilt you chose as the guide. Most of all, have fun.
Here are two links to other info on Flying Geese quilts –
https://indianaquilter40.com/the-great-migration-quilt/
https://indianaquilter40.blogspot.com/2010/04/flying-geese.html
6 thoughts on “NIGHT FLIGHT (or a Flying Geese quilt)”
Great idea for using up a bunch of leftover HSTs in my UFO pile. You always have so many good ideas on this blog.
I used to spend several hours weekly looking at quilt blogs. In the past year, I rarely look at any besides yours. Thanks for being so willing to share your time and ideas.
Thank you for the kind words. I am so glad you like this quilt blog. Happy quilting.
Love this quilt !!! If I contact you via the contact form, can you give me a little more info? I have never thought about setting flying geese this way and am not confident on my measuring skills for something free-hand like this. It is beautiful.
It is one of my favorite quilts. Please contact me via the contact form on the home page and I will try to answer your questions. Have a great day.
Love this quilt !!!! What a fantastic idea of what to do with my stash of Jenny Beyer fabrics. Keep up the great blog.
Thank you. It is one of my favorite quilts too.