4 tips for adding flying geese blocks to a border with the Brother NQ900

Yesterday on QUILTsocial we made 24 flying geese units using the no waste method. Today I’m using my Brother NQ900 sewing machine to sew these units together to start making the borders for my quilt.

TIP 1 Alternate the blocks.

Since I have three different colors of flying geese blocks (red, green and black) I’m alternating them on my four borders. First, I’m sewing together four sets of black and red blocks so the points of the blocks are oriented in the same direction.

TIP 2 Press the seams in the right direction.

Now I need to press the seam between the two blocks with my Oliso Pro Smart Iron. I find it easier to press this seam towards the block on the top (the red block in my picture). This way the bulk of the seam from where the points meet is pressed toward the side that doesn’t have any bulky seams.

Next, I’m sewing a green block beside the black block and then another red block. All my borders will have the blocks in the same order – red, black, green, red, black, green, and so on.

Here, I’ll keep adding blocks onto each of the four borders until I have two borders that are 5 blocks long and 2 borders that are 7 blocks long. Even though I’m putting the three different colored blocks in the same order, I’m starting each row with a different color so that my borders will each look a little different.

As you can see, no two borders are the same!

TIP 3 Measure blocks before cutting other fabrics.

I’m making these 4 borders long enough to fit the quilt by adding my yellow word fabric to the ends. Before you cut your border fabric, measure your flying geese borders with your ruler to make sure they are the width that you think they are – mine are 6½” wide.

With your rotary cutter and using a cutting mat, cut four strips of your border fabric the width of your flying geese border (mine are 6½”) across the width of fabric (WOF), and then cut one square from two of these strips (again, mine are 6½” squares). Set aside the remainder of these two strips.

TIP 4 Make sure the blocks are pointing in the right direction.

Sew one fabric square to the bottom end of each of your shorter pieced borders. The bottom end of the flying geese strip is the end that doesn’t have the point.

Sew one of the short strips of border fabric that you set aside earlier to the opposite end of one of your short borders (the end with the point). Repeat with the second short border.

You now have two borders with a square of border fabric at one end of the 5 flying geese and a longer strip of border fabric at the other end of the flying geese blocks. These are your top and bottom borders.

To make the side borders for the quilt, sew one of the remaining border strips to the top (pointed end) of each of the remaining flying geese block borders.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you how I use my Brother NQ900 sewing machine to make those flying geese blocks appear to float on the outer border of my quilt. See you then.

This is part 3 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 2: 12 easy steps to making no waste flying geese – Pick a size

Go to part 4: 4 steps to adding a floating block border to your quilt top [easy tutorial]