Flying Geese Quilt

Welcome back to the studio blog. I find this time of year to always be quite productive. Right now I’ve got a number of projects underway. This quilt has been one that’s received some time and attention this week.

I’ve used a combination of fabrics that I showed you recently – the Hawaiian inspired/snowflake patterns and the acrylic paint pour designs. They had a similar colour palette and seemed to work pretty well together.

I started making some half-square triangles with some white fabrics and placed them in a ‘flying geese’ arrangement.

Then I built out from that central section adding frames on all four sides, still using half-square triangles, but in different arrangements. I also stopped using the white and mixed in some hand dyes.

As I work, I keep throwing the quilt down on the floor so I can keep an eye on how it’s shaping up. At this point I almost thought it was done, but that central section with the white looked quite isolated. With hindsight, ah the magic of hindsight, I would have inserted a narrow white border in there somewhere, but it was too late for that.

Instead I made some more half-square triangles and the apprentice helped me lay them out as one final narrow saw-tooth border. I think that extra white right to the edge really helped with balance.

I had to sneak and scrape through my fabrics to get enough together for this extra border, but that was so satisfying! I recently read an interview with David Attenborough and he was reminding us all that the most important thing we can do is to limit our waste. Patchwork and quilting was once a thrift craft, but it isn’t anymore is it? I did my bit by eeking out those last few bits and I chopped up all the remains into standard sizes, either 4″ squares or 1.5″ strips. They’ll come in useful for either more piecing, or the strips will be great for binding. Only tiny slivers went into the bin.