Flying Geese Program

Our October program featured a variety of ways to make flying geese. Mary Nell Magee told us about the interesting history of this pattern and how it was a depiction of flocks of geese migrating. She said most pioneer settlers traveling west brought a quilt with them using this design.

This popular pattern was made with a cardboard or plastic triangular template for many years; now there are rulers and tools that can make the task of cutting and piecing the units  much more accurate as well as faster. She showed rulers by Marti Michell, Fons and Porter, Eleanor Burns, Lazy Girl Designs, and products for foundation piecing called Flying Geese on a Roll.

Shirley Wiltshire demonstrated other ways to make the flying geese units, with the help of  posters prepared by Elvia Edwards.

In addition to using flying geese in straight lines (for example, in a border or as the main feature of a strippy quilt), flying geese can be made in curving lines or circles.

Martha Ginn showed how to draw flying geese pathways by using a Flexible Curve (a rubber strip with a lead center to cause it to hold its shape). This tool can be shaped as desired and traced onto a foundation, adding divisions and a "target" for the points of the geese. This target can be a center line or it can flow from nearer one side to the other, as shown in the design on the left.

Polly Duggan used a circle of flying geese as the finish to her 2005 Challenge Piece at Quilters By Heart's Desire.

Polly Duggan's "Genesis 1:16 . . . The Greater Light"