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Monday, December 3, 2012

Easy Street Part 2

Hi Everyone!

If you are checking back for my Easy Street update, welcome back!  If you are here for the first time, I hope you enjoy my blog.  For all my regular reader friends, I'm so glad we are friends!

The next step in our mystery is to make flying geese.  I love flying geese!!  First up, fabric.  Bonnie was using purple this time.  Her purple equals my...

 
Medium Blue
 
 
We were to make flying geese with the purple/medium blue as the "goose" and our background as the "sky" units.  Bonnie's geese technique involves using the Easy Angle and Companion Angle to cut both pieces from 2" strips.  I had never tried this technique for making geese and I found it very effective.  I love that you can cut it all from the same size strips.   Bonnie has a great tutorial and video in her Easy Street Part 2 blog post.  If you are interested, click on the Easy Street photo to the right.
 
If you haven't yet started this step, here is an important tip:  Don't layer the two different sky units together!  Keep them in separate piles!!!  Good grief, I feel like I spent way more time peeling them apart than sewing.  It was really driving me nuts. 
 
When I sew geese units, I always prefer to start from the "peak" point and work down to the skinny bottom angle.  The first sky units are easy, you just match them and sew.
 
 


After pressing, when I sew on the left sky triange, I will match it up...

 
 

...flip it over...


...and then sew.


I don't know about you, but it seems to me that if I start sewing at the skinny point, it sometimes likes to get caught up in the machine.  That isn't good.

I thought the units went together great.  I didn't have any problem, except for the "unpeeling" of the sky triangles.  In case you don't know what I mean, Bonnie instructed us to layer two strips right sides together and use the ruler to cut both at the same time so you have one triange and then the mirror image for the other side--in this technique you have a '"left sky unit" and a "right sky unit."  If I did it again, I would use half the strips face up and cut and then use the other half of my strips face down to cut the reverse piece.  Then I would have piles of "rights" and "lefts."  The piecing would go so much faster. 

Remember last week when I shared some of my "tedium relieving" quirks?  With these geese I employed another one:  the reward system.  The reward system  involves some sort of small treat, Wheat Thin crackers maybe, or M&Ms.  This time it was the crackers.  Once I achieve a certain goal, like sewing the first triangle on my target amount (50 or more,) I can have a cracker.  Once those 50 are pressed, I get another cracker, etc.  Another fun "treat" is a sip of wine.  After awhile you don't notice the tedium any more!  In fact, you don't notice if you are sewing correctly or not!  Neither do you care!  (Until the next day.)  That's why I don't use that reward too often.

Anyway, once both sky pieces were stitched, and the dog-ears clipped off, I had a nice pile of flying geese:


I'm loving the colors!  Oh, and I can't forget to show the rectangles.  One more set of instructions said to cut 64 2" x 3.5" rectangles for a later step.  I easily got those cut while doing the "sky" triangles.


I have one more thing to share.  This weekend I finally got my husband to work on putting out the outside Christmas decorations.  It isn't that he wasn't willing until now, it was that he has been getting home so late from work every evening.  We joked that he hadn't seen the house in the daylight since last weekend, and it was true!  Anyway, you know how some people have those light-up deer for their yard?  We have moose.  Three of them.  One of them we got on clearance the last Christmas before we went to Hawaii.  The moose and most of the decorations stayed on the mainland in storage, so we hadn't used this moose yet.

This moose came out of that box.  Can you believe it?  My husband got it out and put it all together.  I'm impressed, but I'll be more impressed in January if he can fit it back into the box.  I'm guessing that he will, but it will be fun to watch.  Do you know how most people are good at a lot of things, but there is usually something people are really good at?  For my husband, it is folding things to fit into small containers.  He excels at packing (I think it comes from having to pack Army gear all of the time) and especially at putting things back in their original packaging.  As a military family, we save all the original boxes for most of our stuff: TVs, mixer, collectible figurines, microwave, even the shop vac has it's original box!  (All those boxes fill a good part of the attic.  We joke that we are going to have one big bonfire when we finally settle somewhere!) 

I hope you all have a great day!
JoAnne

15 comments:

  1. Love your fabrics, I'm also using blue for the geese. Loving my 2 rulers as well. I'm using my 30's fabrics for the mystery as I've had them in my stash for quite awhile & wanted to use them up. So far so good.

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  2. I forgot about the reward system when I was sewing together my flying geese. I could have used one! There isn't anything more tedious than sewing triangles together. You're so right about them sticking together and woe betide those with squeaky clean hands and a pile of fabric!

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  3. I really like your blue choice.

    I'd have to agree with you on how I would cut my sky pieces next time as well - right and left.

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  4. Wow, so many marvelous red white and blue quilting things!

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  5. Great idea about cutting the strips. Will have to remember that! Love your "reward" system!

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  6. I felt the same way about the sky triangles. It took effort to separate them, when it would have been so easy with two stacks! Oh well.....I'll remember that for next time!

    We still keep all those boxes, and we will never move again! Oy!

    Oh, and I LOVE the moose! Fantastic!

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  7. I like your blog! Can't go wrong with red, white and blue. In fact, I have an entire folder full of r,w & b quilts that I want to make someday. Your ES quilt will be beautiful.

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  8. love your blog! And I love Red White and Blue! Can't wait to see your quilt

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  9. Your geese are really pretty. I love the blues/creams. I'm trying to get my hubby to put up fairy lights on the house but Christmas seems to be coming so fast we might miss out this year!

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  10. This was the first time I made flying geese in this manner, and really enjoyed it. I typically use Eleanor Burns method, but, I think this one may be a little faster, and less waste? I am also making this mystery quilt in patriotic colors, and will be donating it to QOV. Best wishes!

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  11. Your moose reminded me that December = Christmas. With Easy Street at the forefront of my mind, Christmas will be quite a hurried affair. Love your colour way and can't wait to see the red move into action.

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  12. Oh I just know I am going to love this mystery quilt. I really wanted to do it, but I have been away for a week and just got home tonight and have so many things to prepare for the holidays before I leave again in just 2.5 weeks to spend Christmas with my son and his family. I will watching your progress! Oh yes , congratulations on winning for AYOS!

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  13. I have a yard moose too! His name is Eddie. I love your fabric choices. Since I haven't cut all of my geese yet (just two to test the rulers), I'll take your advice on the left and right pieces.

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  14. Your geese are looking great! Love the moose, too.

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  15. What a fun post...love the 'rewards'...think I'll dig out my M&M's and give it a try...of course, instead we could go with a liquid treat - after a few geese...a few sips...we really wouldn't care, now would we! haha Thanks geese tips!

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