Flying Geese- A Beginner’s Guide

I was working on a new star quilt pattern, creating many flying geese when I was inspired to make a Flying Geese tutorial! In my opinion, flying geese can be very tedious. There is a way to make 4 Flying Geese at a time. However, in this easy quilt patterns beginner’s guide to Flying Geese, we will be breaking them down one at a time.

When I design my patterns, I try to make my flying geese float. This way, there are fewer points that you have to worry about lining up or not cutting the tips off. Oftentimes, my star blocks are floating stars for this purpose. Typically, Flying Geese are twice as wide as they are tall (ex. 2″ x 4″ or 3″ x 6″). However, I like to add an extra half-inch or inch to the height of mine (ex. 3″ x 4″ or 4″ x 6″).

A few things you will need, besides your fabric, are a ruler, a fabric pen (I use these), a rotary cutter, and a mat or scissors.

Before you start sewing, what you’ll want to do is draw a diagonal line on the wrong side of your squares. Line up your ruler corner to corner and trace.

Place your drawn-on square onto your rectangle piece. Using a standard presser foot, sew on a diagonal line.

After sewing on the diagonal line, trim 1/4 in. from the seam. Sometimes, depending on how lazy I feel, I will use scissors to trim the excess instead of a rotary cutter. I simply eyeball the 1/4 of an inch. Then fold up and press towards the blue.

Next, place another square on the left side of the rectangle, sewing on the diagonal line.

Trim 1/4 in from the seam. Fold and press towards the blue.

That is how you assemble a Flying Geese unit!

 

When sewing a Flying Geese unit onto your next piece of fabric, you want your sewing needle to stitch right on where the two diagonal lines intersect.

This way, your points end up perfectly, and you don’t have any gaps between your points, or the tip of the triangle isn’t cut off.

Hopefully, you have found this Flying Geese Beginner’s Guide helpful in making your sewing project!

All of my star patterns, as well as my pinwheel quilt pattern, Charming Pirouette, use Flying Geese. Head over to the Yellow Umbrella Quilts Shop to check them out!

Happy Quilting!