When the Sonata collection by Amy Sinibaldi came out I thought it was gorgeous, but had no idea what I would do with it so I didn’t buy it. Then I saw Faith Essenburg’s (@faithessenburg) Sonata Flying Geese quilt and was like ‘WOW. I gotta make me one of these’.
I had never made flying geese before and had no real idea how much fabric I needed. I knew that Faith used a fat quarter set and that I wanted my quilt to be a bit bigger than hers so I got a 1/3 yard bundle (I had to specially request). I figured I would just wing the flying geese size when I got the fabric in.
Using four at-a-time flying geese method and a third yard bundles I decided on a finished flying geese size of 3″ x 6″. I tried to keep the same number of light and dark fabrics cut as I went for both the small and large squares needed for this method. It was the first time I made flying geese and honestly my first 12 or so were a little wonky.
When I finished all my flying geese I tried to figure out a lay out. I realized that a large number of mine were slightly off and the only way to make sure there was not an issue when sewing the quilt top was to make sure none of the geese were going sideways. Lesson learned, square up your geese AS you sew them. I tried to square them up half way through making them, by then it was too late to fix my assembly off-ness. Half were just slightly off.
I just kept all my geese going up and down to offset slight variations in size. Since half the geese had a dark arrow and half had a light arrow, I realized that I had the potential for a cool visual effect.
My poor husband helped me arrange the geese for over an hour before we thought it was good to go. We lived in a small apartment at the time so I had to crawl up on my sewing table to try to get a good reference photo.
I was in for a bit of a surprise when sewing this quilt top together. Corners. All the corners. I had always wanted to make a flying geese quilt, but I had never really looked at how many corners needed to be lined up for this pattern. After I redid my first row, I was okay, but just so many corners. Be prepared y’all.
After I was all done, it was basting time. I floor basted the quilt with the help of my trusty baster buddy, my husband. Yeah, he gets roped into a lot of my shenanigans.
How I wanted to quilt this became a big question for me. I looked at other flying geese quilts on Instagram to get some inspirations. All those corners and lines made me feel that straight line quilting, not free motion quilting (FMQ) was the right call. I flipped through my new book ‘Walk’ which is the best straight line quilting book ever. Seriously, you should get one. I think I may buy my mom one for Christmas this year
I considered doing straight up and down quilting lines, but I just didn’t love the idea and neither did my husband. I decided to learn something new and finally try cross-hatch quilting. In this case a diagonal cross-hatch. This is actually really easy to do on this quilt because you can mostly follow the lines on the flying geese. I originally used a Hera marker to make sure that my quilting lines not over a flying geese seam were straight, but quickly realized I could eyeball it pretty well and that was WAY faster.
After I added my first set of lines, I was tempted to just stop and have diagonal straight line quilting. I decided that I needed to buck up and learn crosshatch. I am so glad I did, it looked way better after adding the second set of diagonal lines for the cross-hatch.
I stayed within the sonata fabric line for the backing and the binding.
After it was all said and done, I took some pictures. The dogs felt the need to be a part of them.
After we moved into the loft six months later, my mom came over and helped me take some quilt pictures. I finally got a good full sized picture.
This was a fun project and I learned a lot. Don’t forget, square up your flying geese as you go.
