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Flying geese in quilt blocks, sashing and borders

Flying geese in quilt blocks, sashing and borders

by Christine Baker
The retreat tote - made in December on QUILTsocial

The retreat tote – made in December on QUILTsocial

Last week I used my retreat tote when I joined a few of my friends for a day of quilting. It worked great to bring all of my tools and my friends were very impressed with how beautiful the Northcott fabrics were. If you haven’t seen my retreat tote, check out my QUILTsocial blog posts from December to see the tutorial. While I was making the tote I fell in love with the ColorWorks Concepts flying geese fabric and kept thinking of all the different things I could do with it. This week I think I want to make a lap quilt, but first I want to play around and figure out the many ways to use flying geese in quilt blocks, sashing and borders.

The flying geese fabric

The flying geese fabric

Making blocks with the flying geese fabric

This fabric is great for making borders as I did in my tote, and although I have an idea of the block I want to make for my quilt, I’ll create a couple of other blocks using EQ7. I can easily insert the fabric into different designs to see how it works. The flying geese strip on the fabric is 2″ wide and each of the flying geese are 1″ high, so that makes it perfect for sewing into different block designs. Here are a couple of different ones:

Split rail fence block using the flying geese fabric

Split rail fence block using the flying geese fabric

Double monkey wrench block using the flying geese fabrics

Double monkey wrench block using the flying geese fabrics

Making sashing strips with the flying geese fabric

The flying geese fabric can also be used for sashing strips, either just the 2″ wide flying geese, or cut wider with the stripes on both sides. Here are a couple of examples of sashings made with the flying geese:

Flying geese sashing strips

Flying geese sashing strips

Flying geese and stripes sashing

Flying geese and stripes sashing

Flying geese borders

Probably the easiest way to use this fabric is in the border of your quilt. The fabric can be cut the width of the fabric or the length of the fabric depending on the look you want. A few of the patterns available on the Northcott website use this fabric for the borders. Check out these designs:

Northcott

Jean Boyd’s pattern called “Solar Flair” uses the Soho Panel and the flying geese fabric cut lengthwise for the border.

Northcott

Castilleja Cotton’s pattern “Fractured Geese” uses the fabric cut width of fabric to give a totally different look to the inner border.

Northcott

Project House 360 uses the flying geese fabric-trimmed so that none of the stripes show to make two borders in their pattern “Oasis”.

The many uses for flying geese fabrics

As you can see this fabric is extremely versatile!! It can be used for blocks, sashing or borders in quilts, not to mention all of the other possible uses such as for curtains, pillows or pillowcases. I’m so happy that Northcott is sending me more of this fabric so that I can get to work making my lap quilt. I hope you liked exploring the many ways to use flying geese fabric in quilt blocks, sashing and borders – see you tomorrow!

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2 comments

Christine Baker February 21, 2016 - 1:19 am

Hi Bonnie, if you email Northcott they would be able to tell you which stores are carrying the pattern. Their contact into is at the bottom of this page:
http://www.northcott.net/about.aspx#contact
Christine

Reply
Janie January 8, 2016 - 9:52 pm

Wow great ideas. Thanks for the inspiration.

Reply

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