How to Piece Flying Geese Units
Happy first day of the month! Today we have a new flower quilt block for the Machine Quilting Block Party and a fun tutorial on how to piece flying geese units. Let’s start by checking out the block for this month:
This is our last three-flower block. I designed quilt blocks #5, #7, and #9 to be very similar with three flowers sprouting out of a taller vase so we’d have a lot of space to quilt in the vase and some tight, complex areas to quilt in the background. It’s good to get experience quilting through all sorts of spaces so I hope you’ve enjoyed creating these blocks as much as I have!
Now let’s learn about piecing a flying geese unit in this video:
Flying geese units are just like half square triangles and that you create a triangular shape without having to actually work with triangles. I love working with flying geese units because they’re simple and quick to piece, and create a nice wide triangle for your quilt blocks.
The key to piecing this unit is leaving the starting rectangle full-size. If your piecing isn’t perfect, but the rectangle was cut correctly, then your flying geese unit will still come out just right.
You can learn much more about piecing and how to improve your piecing skills dramatically with my book How to Piece Perfect Quilts.
In this book you’ll learn how to piece many beautiful quilt blocks and easy quilt tops very accurately. If you’ve been struggling with mismatching seams and wondering why things aren’t lining up this is definitely the book for you!
I hope you’ll join in the fun of the Machine Quilting Block Party and enjoy piecing and quilting our 9th block this month. Once we finish this block will have three rows of the Flower Festival quilt completed. That means we’re three quarters of the way done with our quilt!
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
It seems that leaving the the back piece of the flying geese edge will make the piece thicker than it should be. Is this a problem when sewing the block together?
Yes, it is an extra layer of fabric, but it does help to make the unit more accurate. It will make for a slightly bulkier seam and I can sometimes tell there’s extra fabric when quilting over it. This isn’t the only method for piecing flying geese, just my favorite, so please check out other tutorials online to find an alternative if you don’t like this method.