Foundation Piecing Session 6: Flying Geese

Well I promised you to that I would show you how to un-sew when you're using this tiny little stitch. And here's what I'm talking about. If you look here, look at these stitches, and this is a normal sized seam ripper. Doesn't it look gargantuan? You wouldn't even begin to get it under that stitch.

So here's the trick. Instead of using a seam ripper, I'm just going to take a pin and I'm going to slide it just under. It's a lot easier when I'm closer. Right under one of those stitches, and I'm pulling up just a tiny bit. And with that pin there, like that, I'm going to grab my little scissors, and I'm going to snip that thread, just like that.

And then I'll go and I'll pick up another stitch. Let's see right, you know, just a couple further down. And then I can cut that one. And another one. Whoops.

And you just carry on that way, maybe every three or four stitches, you pull up the loop and you snip it. There, like that. It's actually a lot easier to do when you're not trying to balance all this on camera. There we go. But you can imagine, as you can see, as I start pulling it now, I can just pull that apart already.

You see that? So you can carry on, just go right on down, or once you have this part pulled apart, you can just snip away. Whoops, there we go. You can just snip away these threads as you pull it open. And just go right on down, and you'll have an open seam in no time.

Well that's all it is. Pull up a loop with your pin and snip it with your scissors. Okay, so now that you've seen that, we're going to go on to show you how to make flying geese. Off with the glasses. Okay, flying geese can be made in a lot of ways.

I'm sure you've tried a lot of ways, too. And most of them involve cutting triangles and sewing three triangles together. Or sometimes you do something where you have big squares and small squares and you sew across diagonal and you flip and sew and this, that and the other. And they all work really well and I think they're fine, but my flying geese are often a tad wonky. They're not exactly rectangle, they're more of a, you know, what do you call that, a trapezoid?

So this is a good way to get flying geese, and you can also get them ina big, long row. So I'm going to show you how I do this. And I'm at the same time going to show you how do you paper piece when you haven't pre-cut your fabrics to specific sizes? Let me move my machine over, where you can see. And my glue stick is trying to play too.

Okay, get everything ready to go, like that. So I'm going to start by looking at these fabrics over here. I think these make good flying geese fabrics. I kind of have a goose right there. And I'm just looking at fabrics, I'm looking at how big my little pieces are here.

And I want them kind of big, because you know how they go out, you want to have enough room. So I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten little triangles there. And here's something I will think about, I don't have to, but I will, if you're thinking about grain line, which is a good idea, I'll know that I want my triangles to be cut kind of like this. These are just term squares, and I've got things over here, these are scraps. This is a wonderful thing for scraps, because you don't have to pre-cut.

If you are cutting all of these triangles, it just takes so long. So on this, I feel kind of evil cutting him in half. Or her, no, that's a him. Okay, but I'm going to do it anyway. There you go.

And that's a really big triangle, isn't it, for that corner? Okay, then I have several of them. There's a couple pairs right there. If I want it to be smaller, I would just do, let's see, line these up, like that, and maybe cut a smaller square first. Not a lot smaller, and then cut diagonally.

Do you see I'm not cutting carefully? I do not have a ruler out here and making it all perfect, because don't have to. So here's some triangles, and then for the actual, for the geese themselves, what do you think? Should they all be the same or should they all be different? I'm thinking light colored geese.

Light colored geese, like sky colored geese and wild colored sky. So I'm just cutting a chunk of fabric, as you can see, a messy chunk of fabric. And to do my geese, one, two, three, four, five, I am just going to cut things that are kind of big. That looks like a goose-sized thing. A little bigger than I really need.

You see how fast this is? It's a whole lot faster than cutting something as you normally would. Okay. If you want, you can stack up a whole bunch of fabric and just kind of lop it all at once. And as I said, something like this, doing it this way, will take more fabric than it needs to, but I have a lot of fabric.

I actually have more fabric than I probably will ever be able to use. And I know that sounds really wasteful and horrible and I'm sorry, but I do have a ton of fabric. And time is what I don't have a lot of. So if I can make this fast, even if it uses more fabric, well it's worth it to me. Okay, so, this is one of those foundation papers I showed you.

This is the one that does not wash out, this is the regular one. It's the same thing as before, I'm just going to be working on the back. There's piece number one, and it's going to be a goose. And I'm going to put the right side up, remember that? Okay, so my little dab of glue is right there, that's all it is, it's the tiniest little thing.

When I place this here, I'm going to make sure that it's on, do you see that? You can see right through this paper, and you can see that I have fabric for that quarter inch seam that goes all the way around. Yay! Okay, and I'm going to come over here, and I'm going to fold along that line. I did not pre-fold this, I did not pre-crease it.

That's one of the things about if you get, some of these papers, if you try them, you may find one you really like the way it works, it just handles in a way you're happy with. Okay, now I'm just going to grab one of my big old triangles. Okay, there it is. Again, it's not an even edge, my triangle is not cut with a straight edge. So when I put it down here I need to make sure it's a little beyond, you see that, a little beyond that seam allowance.

Definitely not smaller. Okay, I'm going to turn it over. There we go. Again, I'm starting way off, you have to keep, that seam allowance has to be part of your sewing. Okay, I'm doing the 1.5, small stitch on my machine, and I'm stitching a quarter of an inch past that line.

Where's my little guy? There he is. Grabbing the wrong scissors. That could be dangerous. Okay.

And then when I press this open. Whoops, a thread escaped. It's going to be just like I did before. I'm just going to press it like that, with my little wooden iron. And then I'm going to go fold back on number three.

And I'm just going to do the same thing, we're going to hold that fabric tight and let the paper tear, not the fabric, not the thread. There, fold it back on the line. I do like this paper. I have to say, it's pretty fabulous. This is the June Taylor Perfect Piecing I think it's called, perfect piecing paper.

I like it a lot. Okay, ready for the next one. Well, how about we do with similar color? Again, I'm not having to be careful about the cutting or the positioning, as long as I know I have enough beyond to make a seam allowance. Okay, this time I'm starting a quarter of an inch again.

Okay. I carried my initial thread all the way across, which doesn't really matter. There, cut that off. Okay. And I'm going to press it open on the back, which is actually the front now.

Like that, just like I did the last one. There. What do you think? It kind of looks like a geese right, a goose? Same thing again.

I'm going to turn it over, and this time I'm going to hold that and I'm bending back on that line. There we go, there's the line. You can see it through the paper because this paper is made to be seen through. Okay. And now I'm going to grab another goose, which is again, completely irregular.

But if all these little irregular pieces are beyond that seam allowance, I'm good. I'm being very careful to center it, though. See, how I've got my lines? Because I don't want it to be too short on the sides. That would be sad.

Come on thingy. My threads get tangled up and decide they're going to play with us. Okay, there we go. Okay. Turn it over.

Now, look at that. If I want to, I can trim that blue where it's kind of weird, and I think I will. I just go back to where I was before when I trimmed. Excuse me. And trim like that.

Okay. My mom would be so shocked at me throwing everything on the floor. And I wanted to show you one other thing. This is the at a quarter plus ruler. It has this beveled edge, it's really thin.

This is the edge you do not want to run along with your rotary cutter, because you could actually cut the edge, which I found out the hard way. But I wanted to just show you something. You can use this as a way, instead of using that wooden iron, you can do that. You can press that right along there. Okay, now for another goose.

This is going to be number five. So I'm going to fold back there, hold onto that. Remember, ripping paper, not ripping thread. Okay, come on. I do find it a little harder, because the perforation is so easy to fold properly.

I think this can be a little bit harder to do. Which is why I pre-fold usually, but you don't have to, that's what I wanted to show you, just how quick and, well, it's not slap-dash, but people might think so. Okay, how about this guy? Yeah, that's a great big triangle, but it's okay. Okay.

You see what I mean about it doesn't have to be exact? You think about how much time you spent cutting things to make sure they're absolutely right, because on most piecing, if you're cutting is a 16th of an inch off, what if your cutting is a 16th of an inch off and you're making a log cabin block that has like 18 little seams across? That's an inch and an eighth that you're going to be off in your block. Yikes. Okay.

Which is so not what's happening here. All right, and then I'll just press that open, just like I've done the rest. Okay. And fold back before number six. Kind of getting the hang of this one, right?

One thing you can do with this ruler, you can also put that on your line if you want and fold back against it. That works, too. I guess the thing I'm trying to say about the papers and the perforating and the folding and all is that it's an individual choice. It's really, everybody does things differently. What works for me is not necessarily what's going to work for someone else.

I tend to not cut first, I don't pre-cut my shapes. I do just what I'm doing now. And my best friend is so horribly appalled at the idea of not pre-cutting and just kind of throwing things in here willy nilly. She couldn't stand this. She can't stand to watch.

But our geese turn out just fine, my geese are as fine as hers are. And I enjoy my process, and she does, too, her way. Okay, I'm just going to show you this one here. All right. So I'm going to press this guy open.

See that, geese? And just what I'm going to do now. You know how it's going to go. I just keep going like that, right? But just so you get an idea of what it would look like if I had finished it up and trimmed it.

I'll just trim along on the back on that seam allowance, because I want you to get an idea of how cool this is. And when you think about it, you could do a flying geese border, like a really big one, really quickly. You're not having to pre-cut. You're not having to pre-cut, you're not having to be absolutely perfect, except I do think it's important to sew on the line. But other than that.

And then you just trim it up. And you're not having to... True confessions. I can't tell you how many times I have had to block a stupid flying goose. I've had everything just right, I've got quarter inch seam allowances, I don't understand it, but I have a goose that is not the way a goose should be.

Okay. And just fold this down so you can see. There we go, perfect little flying geese, all set and ready to go. And it was quick and it's easy and it's fun. This is my favorite way to piece, absolutely favorite way to piece.

So I'll be back with you next time. I'm going to show you a couple of other things I think you need to know about paper piecing, including how you can draft your own little paper piecing units, your own foundations. In case there's something you want to do and you don't have a pattern for it. All righty, see you back in a minute.