No Waste Flying Geese and the Lazy Girl Flying Geese x 4 Ruler

Flying Geese. The ability to make them is a critical skill for any quilter. Whether you are traditional quilter or more modern, they show up in all quilt patterns. Some traditional quilt patterns even call for upwards of 300 flying geese. That's a lot of flying geese.
In my beginning quilting days, flying geese were very intimidating. I loved the look of flying geese, but I was not confident in my ability to make them. The points! Oh the points. So pretty.....unless you cut them off. There are even three opportunities to cut off points, SCARY!

Traditionally pieced flying geese involve a rectangle and two smaller squares or cutting squares into several different triangles with biased edges. (Everyone loves stretchy biased edges right?) Either way you have some extra fabric that ends up in the scrap bucket never to be seen again or in File 13. Also known as, the garbage can.

Have no fear, NO WASTE flying geese are here! If you haven't tried no waste flying geese, you are missing out. One of our newest kits involves this technique and it was super easy to make. The pattern is called Twisted Geese and has been created from the Fragile fabric line by Zen Chic for Moda.

This pattern is made with a layer cake (pre-cut 10 inch squares) and a variety of neutral backgrounds. Your cutting list involves your back ground squares only, which means you spend very little time in the prep stage and can get right to the sewing.

Let's get down to it! You will need one large square and four of the smaller squares. Each set of squares will result 4 flying geese.

First, all of your background squares need guide lines drawn on the back of them, making sure these are good and straight is important.

Your background squares go in opposite corners of your layer cake square, right sides together. The two background squares will overlap in the center, and your drawn sew lines should align to create one straight line across the length of the two background squares.

Next sew 1/4 inch out from your guide line on both sides. This 1/4 inch on each side of the guide line will become your seam allowance.

Now you can cut along the length of your guide line creating two pieces.

Then, press your seams and you will have two pieces that look like this:
Left- pre pressing. Right- post pressing

With each of your pieces you will add another background square, with your guide line running perpendicular to your seam. The guideline should bisect the overlap of the first two background pieces and the corner of the layer cake square.

Pin and sew your 1/4 inch seam allowance on both sides of the guideline.

Cut on your guideline and press! Viola, flying geese.

In this pattern the no waste technique is used, but you do have to trim your flying geese down to their final size, 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches.

The hardest part of the no waste technique is knowing what size your squares need to be.
In the case of Twisted Geese, the pattern tells you what size the fabric pieces need to be, but the finished flying geese are not perfectly sized. They are slightly larger than what you need and you still have to trim.

If you want perfect flying geese with the no waste method you can:

Do all sorts of math in order to calculate what sizes squares you need and very carefully measure 7/8ths
Or
Find a cheat sheet of measurements on Google and very carefully measure 7/8ths
Or
Use the Lazy Girl Flying Geese x4 'No Math' Ruler.

If you want perfect flying geese every time WITHOUT having to measure or trim, the Lazy Girl Flying Geese x 4 'No Math' Ruler will come to your rescue. It is an 8 1/4 inch x 8 1/4 inch ruler that has a break down of exactly what size squares you need to pair together to create perfectly sized flying geese.
With this ruler you are always working with the finished size, so you never have to calculate anything. When your quilt pattern calls for 200 2 x 4inch geese, you just find the 2 x 4 inch sizing guide lines on the ruler and away you go. No Math!

The size options range from 3/4 x 1 1/2 inch to 3 1/2 x7 inch.

This Lazy Girl ruler even comes with no waste flying geese instructions.

This is a great tool for making perfect flying geese in almost all standard quilt sizes. I will note, if your flying geese need to be 4 x 8 inches or larger, then you will still have to cut them the old fashion way. However, the no waste portion of the flying geese instructions will still apply. Good news, if your flying geese are that big, you are probably not going to need 200.

In addition to flying geese, the ruler can be used for half square triangles, and quarter square triangles. Joan Hawley of Lazy Girl talks about other uses for the ruler with Kaye Wood in the video linked below. The beginning of the video is sewing machine maintenance, but if you can make it to the 11 minute mark she has some really interesting ideas.

Flying Geese And More With Joan Hawley of Lazy Girl.

So if you are a master of flying geese and just want to try the no waste technique, have at it! If you are new to the quilt game and flying geese are still a little intimidating, the Lazy Girl Ruler may be for you.

The Twisted Geese pattern by Zen Chic is really fun and there are lots of possible designs. You aren’t limited to the layout in the pattern, and if you need a different finished size, adding or subtracting a row or column is a cinch.

The quilt below is another variation on the pattern created by Jody, who also works at Country Sampler.