Easy Street Mystery Quilt Part 2

 Here are my purples all laid out for my flying geese. These are for Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street Mystery Quilt Part 2.

Here are the flying geese I finished yesterday and below is the following method I used to make them.

I used this ruler/tool called a Wing Clipper. I had learned to use it in a class earlier this year and it makes very accurate flying geese. It has instructions for ten different sizes of flying geese.

 For finished flying geese of 1 1/2" x 3", you begin with a 4 1/2"purple square and two 2 1/2" black and white squares. This (plus two more black and white squares) will make four flying geese.

 Lay your black and white squares on opposite sides of the purple square, just in from the corner edge. The instructions with the ruler suggest drawing a line on opposite sides of this center line drawn. I just sewed a 1/4" away using my 1/4" foot as a guide.

 Here are my sewn lines on either side.

 Cut apart down the center with a rotary cutter.

 Press flat then press towards the black and white squares.

 Now you add another black and white square to the purple corner, again, bringing it in 1/16" of an inch. It is important to do this. If you don't bring it in enough then your flying geese won't trim up properly.

 Mark the lines and sew again, just as before.

 Cut apart and press to the black and white triangles.

 Now you are ready to square up the flying geese with the Wing Clipper Tool.

 Line it up with the valley towards you along the proper lines. It is clearly marked. Trim the right side and top right of the flying geese.

 Rotate around 180 degrees and trim the opposite side.

 There you have a perfect sized flying geese - well, actually four!

It seemed a little tedious at first because I had to remember the steps but once I got in my mind how to line the squares up every time it moved along pretty quickly, especially with chain piecing. 

 However, I don't really like to draw diagonal lines on fabric. Just one of those things I don't care to do. So, here is another tool that eliminates that step completely.

 It is the Clearly Perfect Angles Sheet. It's a thin plastic that clings to your sewing machine top and table. There are good instructions for aligning it with your machine.

 You cut a little rectangle out of the center when you first purchase it and line it up on your machine so the 'hole' is where your feed dogs are. There are lines for a center cut or 1/4" seam on either side and that is what I used. Just lined the pieces to the left of the 'gray' line, watch the bottom where you are feeding it into the machine and sew away. No marking and it goes well.

Whoops, I made an error on one set. Got in a hurry and forgot to press my black and white squares open before I added those on the second corner. Oh well, I cut a few extra anyway - LOL! Happy Stitching, to those doing the mystery quilt!