The theme for the Pieceful Patchwork banner for October from Shabby Fabrics is autumnal. There are two Flying Geese blocks (... call to mind migrating birds...?) and two Pumpkin blocks. The color tones are subdued oranges, charcoals, and blacks like Halloween but not particularly garish or scary or witchy in theme. As usual, I cut out the fabrics and organized the pieces in my tray with Alphabitties. I used blue Alphabitties for the pumpkin blocks and black Alphabitties for the flying geese blocks.
Flying Geese Block
The instructions were for making the flying geese by attaching speckled-cream squares, which are the sky, at four corners of a larger color square which is the birds body. This method yields four flying geese rectangles at a time with very little waste. There will be no bonus pinwheels for me from the sew and flip method for flying geese that yields one rectangle at a time. I happened to have in my tools the Bloc-Loc Ruler to make 3" x 6" flying geese. Sewing and trimming by this method made short work of generating 16 flying geese units, four each of a black/speckled-cream or orange/speckled-cream color combination. I also put into service my rotating mat to speed up the trimming.
The instructions were for making the flying geese by attaching speckled-cream squares, which are the sky, at four corners of a larger color square which is the birds body. This method yields four flying geese rectangles at a time with very little waste. There will be no bonus pinwheels for me from the sew and flip method for flying geese that yields one rectangle at a time. I happened to have in my tools the Bloc-Loc Ruler to make 3" x 6" flying geese. Sewing and trimming by this method made short work of generating 16 flying geese units, four each of a black/speckled-cream or orange/speckled-cream color combination. I also put into service my rotating mat to speed up the trimming.
These 16 units are joined into two 8-unit blocks. The blocks have opposite polarity of the center pinwheel and they will go in opposing corners of the banner.
Pumpkin Block
Each pumpkin block has a saw tooth star at its center, made from flying geese units. The instructions called for a finished flying geese unit to measure 1½" x 3". The closest sized Bloc-Loc ruler I had was for 2" x 4" finished. That was OK. I used only the top edge where the point was to get that edge accurate using the ridge feature of the Bloc-Loc ruler. I trimmed the bottom edge using a regular ruler so that the height was 2". Then I trimmed to two side edges, once again with a regular ruler to measure 1¾" out to each edge from the center, giving a 3½" width. Yes, having the desired size Bloc-Loc ruler would have been easier, allowing trimming all four sides without switching rulers. But Flying Geese Block-Locs are pricy, on the order of $40 each. They are certainly worth the convenience for making many units but I had only a few to make and so I improvised. I had two saw tooth stars to construct, each needing four flying geese units.
Each pumpkin block has a saw tooth star at its center, made from flying geese units. The instructions called for a finished flying geese unit to measure 1½" x 3". The closest sized Bloc-Loc ruler I had was for 2" x 4" finished. That was OK. I used only the top edge where the point was to get that edge accurate using the ridge feature of the Bloc-Loc ruler. I trimmed the bottom edge using a regular ruler so that the height was 2". Then I trimmed to two side edges, once again with a regular ruler to measure 1¾" out to each edge from the center, giving a 3½" width. Yes, having the desired size Bloc-Loc ruler would have been easier, allowing trimming all four sides without switching rulers. But Flying Geese Block-Locs are pricy, on the order of $40 each. They are certainly worth the convenience for making many units but I had only a few to make and so I improvised. I had two saw tooth stars to construct, each needing four flying geese units.
After adding orange borders to the top and bottom of this star, central to the pumpkin, I then used the flip corner technique, chain stitching to efficiently add on a yet different orange background corners. Once I fed one star through, I fed the second one through without breaking thread, repeatedly bringing the rear star around to the front. The cut off corners however were too small to make bonus pinwheels. I suppose I could have. but the effort would have been extreme for the small finished size.
When I used the same flip corner technique to add the speckled cream background corners to the full size pumpkin, I was able to salvage the four corners from each pumpkin and have two pinwheels as a bonus.
The stems I made one at a time because I wanted them to be mirror images and I was afraid I'd get confused if I tried both at once. The second photo shows the two pumpkins as reflections of each other.
I added a striped sashing between the blocks, satisfied that both the flying geese blocks and the pumpkins blocks had mirror images in diagonally opposed positions on the banner. Aa a last assembly step. I add the inner charcoal and outer black borders.
Next up is the sandwiching and quilting. Then I will add the labels, a hanging sleeve, and finally the binding. I have to remind myself that for these banners, the assembly of the top takes me less time than the quilting and completion. Once I acknowledge this fact, I become more patient about the time commitment to finish the final stage. I consider my self primarily a piecer, and only secondarily an FMQer.
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