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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

BOW #51 Flying Geese

This week we're revisiting a block--sort of.  We haven't talked specifically about just Flying Geese, but we have used a Flying Geese unit in quite a few blocks, starting with BOW #6,  Dutchman's Puzzle.  (Visit that post to review a couple of choices for constructing a Flying Geese unit.)

Flying Geese blocks come in various orientations and sizes and combinations.  A block might contain one or two or three or more units and they may be placed straight on, opposite, or diagonally.






















A Flying Geese unit is one of the very basic units in quilting, because you can use it as building block in many other blocks:  the Variable Star, Weathervane, and more.   When you see a quilt block try breaking it down into smaller units:  squares, triangles (our old friends, the HST Half Square Triangle and QST Quarter Square Triangle), and the Flying Geese unit.  You can fill years of your life making quilts from blocks that contain just those basic shapes.






















The FG unit may or may not be obvious in the block, but if you start breaking down blocks into units when you look at a block, you'll soon start to see them everywhere in blocks.   Can you find where, in these blocks, you could use FG units?




















Here are a couple of quilts at my house that contain Flying Geese units:   the first is made with just the FG units, in the blocks (with pairs set in a sort of pinwheel fashion) and in the border that has the geese flying around and around the quilt.   The second quilt is one of my first quilts (hence the faded fabric--the dye in the early calicoes wasn't that fast, and it has spent some time in sunlight), and the FG units are turned into pine tree tops.















 

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