Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Seventy-One Geese A Laying...


...laying on my cutting table, that is.  I know, "lying" is proper, but I wanted to reference the Twelve Days of Christmas so we could think some cool thoughts.

For the border for my crumb quilt, I need 138 flying geese units.  As of tonight I have 71 completely finished (pieced, pressed, and trimmed).  I often get questions about how to mix up the colors in a scrappy quilt.

You can see from the picture that I took the time to carefully trim each unit.  There was a time when I did not do that.  And I still don't do it all the time, but for borders, yes!  I will need to measure my quilt center as well as my borders to measure for "floater" inner borders.  That will be explained when the big moment comes!

Here is my plan for the geese units...I am pinning 10 of a similar color/value together.  That makes it easier to count where I am in the process as well as keeping the similar values together.  When I reach the magic number (in this case 138), I will deal out the four borders like dealing cards.  The sides have more than the top and bottom, but I will deal out all the greens until I run out (perhaps adding a few more to the side piles).  Then I'll continue with each color.

After the color balance is good, I'll arrange each border mixing up the colors.  Then I'll use the leader/ender method to sew each border together. 

Another good reason to pin together like colors is that since I'm cutting all of these from scraps, I can see if I need to balance things out with more of a particular color.  I know now I need some browns and oranges.  I have lots of gold, blue, purple (my favorite!), greens, and reds. 

~Joan, who is voiceless and still finds it amusing when people whisper back to her :)

2 comments:

rubyslipperz1052 said...

Flying Geese are fun blocks to do...you have some great colors!

hugZ,
annie
rubyslipperz106.blogspot.com
=) new follower =)

Anonymous said...

I use a very similar method to make sure colors are distributed well!