When Your Flying Geese Head South

I got it in my head last month that I needed to make a quilt with oversized flying geese—like, really oversized. I had been wanting to piece something with Essex Linen and to sew a palette of saturated blues. Surely one quilt project could check off each of those boxes.

I got fairly far with my vision, or so I thought. I decided to make some of the geese out of made fabric. I would sew a few random pretty blocks and join them with bits of scraps, comparable to Victoria Finlay Wolfe’s technique but with more structure. I would cut the other geese out of yardage.

I started with the largest of the flying geese, which measures 15 inches by 40 inches. I really liked the results ...

One of my giant mutant flying geese!

Then I moved on to the scrappy geese and decided I hated them ...

Trust me, viewing this in person with the other blocks was total ick.

Annoyed with how things were going, I didn’t bother sewing the linen on here. But I had already sacrificed my last few blue Lizzy House butterflies for this block. Ack!

The geese with the made fabric seemed fussy. Perhaps the problem was an issue of scale and my approach would be better suited to something smaller? I kicked the scrappy geese from my flock, tweaked the palette, considered a pop of color … and still felt that I was on the wrong path.

Maybe these blues will do the trick?

As I forced the creation of this quilt along, I knew I was on the verge of losing my sewjo. So here’s what I did when my flying geese headed south ... I folded all the fabric up neatly and hid it from view. I cleaned my house. I did a little online shopping. And I decided to wrap up some projects that would be surefire successes, ones that would require little brain power or creativity at this stage of the game.

Here are the geese-less projects that are now on the sewing table:

My Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt. The quilt top is fully pieced. I just need to sew the back and quilt this project. With the easy piecing comes easy quilting. I’ll be stitching in the ditch on this one. Yes, please. I hope to post the finished quilt and tutorial before Thanksgiving.

My Obsession Quilt. I started my Obsession Quilt almost a year ago with a thorough excavation of my scraps. It’s time to finish her up. One quadrant is done. I just need to complete the other three. And heaven help me, if I’m unable to do that in the weekend retreat I have coming up, I’m heading south with those geese of mine!

I know I’m not the only one. What do you do when you’re in danger of losing your sewjo? I promise not to judge you if your solution involves alcohol, credit cards, or (my go-to) cleaning projects, like organizing your bathroom drawers. (Hey, I might not have control over my quilt projects, but I have control over those drawers!)

Linking up to WIP Wednesday and Let’s Bee Social ...