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We had a great turnout to hear Laura L.’s fussy cutting presentation at the March 1 evening meeting.

Fussy cutting is more than just cutting a cute fox out of a novelty fabric, it is the intentional use of prints or patterns from within a fabric.

Laura showed us the tools for fussy cutting and showed us you can get started with just the quilting rulers you already have, or you can make a template with just a regular piece of printer paper. There are specific fussy cutting templates available, but Laura showed us how to get started without them.

When choosing fabric for fussy cutting, there are many considerations, including directionality, repeat, and scale. Squares are the easiest to fussy cut. Most importantly, make sure to account for a 1/4″ seam allowance. Once you get comfortable fussy cutting, you can experiment with HSTs, flying geese, and even improv.

Fussy cutting is often used in English Paper Piecing. Laura showed us various blocks and explained secondary patterns.

One of the easiest ways to implement fussy cutting into your projects is to make a basic block and feature a motif. Some blocks that work well are:

Thanks to everyone who came out to our February evening meeting. Several announcements were made by Rebecca, our Social Media chairperson. The Member Login area of our website is now live, you can read more in depth about that here. Rebecca also talked about the ways you can contribute to the blog, those ways can be found in the member area here.

There are several committees in 2018 looking for volunteers. Including, Sustainable Show Committee, QuiltCon Charity Quilt Committee, Community Outreach Committee, Retreat Committee, and Social Media Committee. If you would like to get more involved with the guild by volunteering for a committee, please sign up at a meeting or open sew or email info@bouldermqg.com to let us know what you’re interested in. Monique and Barb are also still looking for STEAMfest volunteers so get in touch with them if you’d like to volunteer.

Claudia and Laura L. presented on flying geese blocks.

Give Your Quilt Some Birds

Flying geese quilt blocks have been part of quilting history for a very long time and can be seen in quilts dating back to the 19th century. The use of flying geese in traditional quilts can portray a modern feeling. This poses the question again, what really is a modern quilt? And allows us, as modern quilters, to take such a classic block, a flying goose block, and use it in our own modern quilts.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has a wonderful index available online for looking up historical and traditional quilts. Here are two examples of traditional quilts with a modern feel because of the use of flying geese blocks.

The use of flying geese in modern quilts varies greatly. Quilts containing modern geese can be made modern by changing the scale, as shown in the example by Lindsay Stead. The use of negative space also makes flying geese blocks into a beautiful modern composition, quilt by Sofia Locke, 2016 Quiltcon third place, use of negative space . Sherri Lynn Wood’s book, The Improv Handbook, has nice prompts about making improv, or wonky, versions of flying geese. These wonky flying geese can give your improv quilt a very modern look.

Laura showed off some different examples of flying geese.

There are seven different ways to construct flying geese quilt blocks:

Using 3 triangles, tutorial from Quilter’s Cache.

Single FG unit, 1 rectangle + 2 squares tutorial from Boulder MQG.

No Waste 4 FG, 5 squares tutorial from Boulder MQG. 

4 FG, 2 squares tutorial from Connecting Threads.

Dimensional 1 Seam, 1 rectangle + 2 squares tutorial from Connecting Threads.

Paper piecing, traditional tutorial from Fresh Lemon Quilts or drafting freeform geese tutorial by Gail Garber.

Wonky or Improv tutorial from Sew Unsew.

However you choose to construct and incorporate flying geese into your next project, just remember to have fun! Don’t forget to share you flying geese quilts and projects by tagging us @bouldermqg and #bouldermqg.

Here are some of our February show and tell projects

Kim showed off her bright and colorful rainbow quilt that was inspired by Katie A.’s rainbow scrap quilt. Barb finished her bias tape quilt that she started at the BMQG Latifah Safir workshop last summer. Monique brought her mats to show off a new technique she learned from Jackie Gering’s book, Walk. And our visitor Julia showed us a sample of her quilting skills in this HST quilt with decorative stitch matchstick quilting.

Rebekah and Wendy S. showed off their January blocks, it’s not too late to join in on the 2018 BOM challenge!

Full presentation documents from meeting available to BMQG members in the member area.

Thanks again to everyone who came out for the meeting and we hope to see you all at the open sew on February 18 (be prepared for our pincushion challenge!)  and the next evening meeting March 1.

If you have any pincushions to share or favorite tutorials, please fill out this survey and share them with us by February 12!