Another Siggy Border - Dogtooth (or Flying Geese)

Ok, I couldn't stop playing with border ideas for the siggy quilt. I decided to carry over the triangle theme into the border this time. These dogtooth triangles look so neat!

The dogtooth units are 6" x 3". You could make flying geese blocks and use a variety of scraps, or go with a solid color as I did here. I expanded the inner border to 3" so the calculations would come out right. There are 11 dogtooth (or flying geese) units in the vertical borders, and 7 units in the horizontal borders. The little corner squares are 3" finished.

I think this border makes the quilt look more festive. This one measures 48" x 72".

How do you make flying geese units? There's a great tutorial on patchpieces.com website. Whats nice about these directions is that they are not size-specific so you can use the technique for any unit as long as you know what size you need. In this case, 3" x 6". The site offers a pdf to download if you like.

Using patchpieces guidelines, in my case I'd cut 7-1/4" squares of the red prints, and 3-7/8" squares of the light prints. Then, following the patchpieces instructions, you'll get 4 flying geese units out of each set. You'd only need 5 sets to make all the units for the siggy quilt border! (You'll actually have 2 left over.) For time-pressed people like me, I love knowing that I can sew up 4 units at one time, and in the blink of an eye.

Here's an example of a flying geese unit (I just used random colors). I'm going to cut out some squares already. It will be so fun putting them together.

Hope these ideas are helpful in planning your siggy quilt top!

Oh Siggys, How do I set thee?

I played around with EQ5 today to see how I'd put my siggy blocks together from Cootiebug's siggy block swap. Here are two ideas. We will have 60 blocks. I'm sewing mine into 15 (12") blocks, rotating the siggy centers (see image on the right). I made the inner black border 2" and the outer border 3" so the finished size will be approximately 46 x 70", but any size borders would be fine. Because there will be such a variety of colors in the quilt, any border will work with this. All the blocks look fabulous, I can't wait to see them all in person!

A big shout of thanks to Connie for being our host for this swap!

Happy sewing...

UFO Attack - 3 Down, Several to Go!

I haven't posted in a while due to a hectic pace around here - several family visitors in and out and some travel thrown in for good measure. But, the sun was out early Saturday morning so I decided to tackle one of my UFO bins! By 9:30 am I had 2 I-spy baby quilts quilted, plus another small donation quilt. These will be donated to South Puget Sound Project Linus - part of my goal for 2009 is to donate between 10 - 12 to this great cause. I completed 25% just yesterday (and am about 50% there in total)! I have several more blocks cut and ready to sew into more I-spy tops. That may be my 60-minute sewing therapy for today. :o)

My sister-in-law from California brought me some beautiful Asian fabric FQs from a shop she discovered on a needlepoint search with a friend - The Treasure Hunt in Carpinteria, CA. She picked out the selection with my pseudo-niece Sarah; they were visiting through yesterday. What a wonderful gift. I just love the prints! Now the "hunt" is on to find the best pattern to showcase them!

There is a very pretty quilt in the "Quilts from the Quiltmakers Gift" book (the Flying Birds pattern) that uses Asian prints, but I'm also interested in making something with circles... I should scan the fabrics into EQ5.

Hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful weekend! Sew happy!