Hen & Chicks August Block 2 - Aunt Sukey's Choice

 

I was on a roll with the flying geese, and so wanted to try out this one that uses both geese with orange bodies, and inverted geese with orange wings. Together they make a nice diamond shape that I could see as the foundation for lots of variations with different corners or centers. 

Lots of little pieces this time! Just go slow and be methodical, nothing is hard, just taking small pieces and combining them slowly to get bigger pieces.  

 Start by drawing lines along the diagonals of all of the small squares. I know it is tempting to try to sew straight across without the pencil line to guide you, but with these little guys, that is tricky. 

Use orange squares on 4 background rectangles and background squares on 4 orange rectangles. Save the other 4 background rectangles for later. Sew on the drawn line. 

You can go ahead and sew your strip set at the same time. I used a different orange fabric, but you could certainly use the same orange depending on what is in your scrap bin. 

Press the flip and press the corners before trimming the extra triangles from behind. Press the strip set with the seam going toward the orange. Now repeat the corner squares on the left side. 

When you return from pressing, sub cut the strip set into sections the same width as your original strips. 

Now we are getting there! You should have 4 orange bodied geese and 4 orange winged geese. Combine each of these with the orange bod on top and the orange wings on bottom. 

Combine the twosies from your strip set with the remaining 4 background rectangles. 

Now you are ready to sew. Make sure you are sewing with the orange winged geese on top so that you can get the seam to go through the point cleaning. 

Likewise, sew with the pieced unit of the the twosies on top to make it easier to manage the seams and make sure they remain headed in the correct direction.

Now your subunits should look like this. You have 4 spikes and for framed orange squares. Each unit should be square if you have pieced carefully with a quarter inch seam allowance. 

Now we are ready to put it all together. Place the spiky goose points in the center of each side with the peak pointing up and then fill in the corners with the squares going out. I think these would make adorable 4 patches when several of these blocks go together. The lack of secondary patterns is one of the sad parts of sampler quilts. 

There you go! I can imagine variations of this block with HST units in the corners or a nice dark fabric framing the corner squares. Lots of ideas to play around with here.  Enjoy!