128 Flying Geese Complete & Other Stuff

Yippee...finished the 128 flying geese units that was considered our clue #2 in the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt called Easy Street.  All I need to do is clip the dog-ears off to consider them completely finished.

(Side note:  It's still not too late to jump in and make the quilt along with all the thousands of Bonnie Hunter fans across the world.  All the "clues" so far (there are three at this point) can be found at:

Easy Street Mystery Quilt by Bonnie Hunter

While I finished sewing up the above 128 flying geese, I sewed on some of my Tennessee Waltz units as my "leaders & enders".  Just look at how far along you can get without even realizing it simply by having a different project to the side of your sewing machine to lead or end with....

Are you familiar with the term "leaders & enders"?  It's really simple...when sewing together small quilt pieces...rather than have all these irritating long strings of thread at the beginning and end of each individual unit (and then taking the time to cut the long threads off)...you simply maintain SOMETHING under your needle at all times so that you are basically sewing a never ending piece.  This is also called "chain-feeding/sewing".  You sew one piece and rather than pull it away and clip the thread, you just add another item under the pressure foot.  Another plus....you don't waste any thread.

To help me keep count of my flying geese units, I would sew 10 flying geese seams, then "end" that section with one Tennessee Waltz block.  While the Tennessee Waltz block was under my needle...I clipped the flying geese away, clipped them apart, pressed the seams, then brought them back to the machine and started feeding them through the the machine again for the second seam in construction.  In other words, I'm killing two birds with one stone. :)

Today I plan to cut out the pieces needed for Clue #3 that was released this past Friday.  Now we get to play with the Turquoise fabrics we chose (if you are using Bonnie Hunter's color suggestions that is)....or whatever color you like best for your own selection.

Here is my assortment of Turquoise fabrics....

My daughter Kirsten came in the other day and saw all the fabrics I planned to use for this mystery (Lime Green, Turquoise, Purple, Grey and Black on White prints) and claimed this quilt for herself. :) :)

With this next clue we will be making 64 shaded 4 patch blocks using turquoise triangles, purple squares and black on white triangles.  I don't recall ever making this particular block before so I'm looking forward to learning something new.

Now it's time to get to the cutting board!