Quick Quilt Top – Flying Geese: Help us pick a design layout

This is the first article in our summer 2022 Quick Quilt Tops series. As part of this series, we’ll create a quilt together – from picking a pattern and a quilting design. You can find previous installments at this link. 

Ever thought you would like to try your hand at designing your own quilt? One fun, easy way to do this is to pick a block and lay them out in different ways – it’s amazing all the different looks you can get! I love to play around with different layouts, so I was thrilled when APQS asked me to take on the next iteration of its Quick Quilt series.

I decided I would use Flying Geese as my block. It is very versatile, as it can be used as part of a block or even the entire block, as I’ve done in my layouts below. Formed with a rectangle that is twice as long as it is wide, it provides movement with a minimum piecing effort. There are many ways to quickly piece this block. This article shows five different methods for making Flying Geese. My favorite is to use a large square with four smaller squares to create four matching Flying Geese at one time, with no waste. Here’s a link to a video for this method. No matter which method you choose, you will be amazed at how quickly they work up.

Flying Geese block

I’ve created 10 different quilt pattern layouts using Flying Geese blocks. EQ8 makes this a breeze! All the designs below use the same Flying Geese block, but I have rotated it different ways. In a few options, I put in other values to help showcase design elements.

Which pattern is your favorite?

Help us pick the pattern that we’ll use for the quilt by voting for your favorite below. Once the votes are counted, I’ll sew up the most popular layout into a top and create some quilting designs for you to vote on again. Finally, I’ll quilt the top with the winning quilting design, and then we’ll give away the finished quilt, along with some APQS bling, to a lucky person!

Scroll to the bottom of this post to vote for your favorite design layout.

1 – Alternating Up and Down

2c- Stars and Eyes

3 – Flocking of Birds

4 – Rotating Alternate Directions

5 – Pin Wheels and Stars

6 – Spinning Tops

7 – Dancing Boxes

8 – Ball Gown

9 – Large Stars

10 – Large Stars and Friendship Star

Voting is now closed. In the next blog post in this series (published on September 6), we’ll take the design with the most votes and create a variety of quilting designs for you to choose from. Finally, we’ll quilt the project with the quilting design that gets the most votes, and then give the quilt away to one lucky winner—along with some cool APQS bling!

Bonus

If you want to play on your own, I’ve included a layout below with Flying Geese in a variety of value options.  Simply make some photocopies, cut the units apart and play on your own.  Feel free to share your own unique designs in the comments section!