Who’s dreaming of a summer vacation? Jetting off to a tropical destination inspired the July block for the Little Bit Different 2.0 collection. Combine flying geese with a fun color gradient and you will be ready to take Flight with this month’s free quilt block.

Download instructions for the Flight quilt block here.

Flight Quilt Block

Construction of this block is fairly simple. Start with 3 1/2″ strips of fabric, about 15″ long will be plenty. You will need one rectangle and two squares of each color. I like to build a gradient with three colors, but it would be fun to use the whole rainbow!

I like to chain piece, so I add one square to the end of all my rectangles. No need to mark the fabric if you keep an eye on key indicators on your machine. Learn how in this video. It may help to write out your color progression so that the chevrons appear in the correct order when the units are sewn together.

Then it’s time to press towards the corners and trim away the extra layers. Now we are ready to add the second square to the opposite end of our rectangle.

Repeat the pressing and trimming, then sew the flying geese together on their long edges.

Piecing Tips

Sometimes the sewing machine likes to devour the corners when you are sewing a diagonal seam. If this happens, I rotate my pieces so that I start the seam on the long edge of the rectangle protion of the flying geese unit.

When you are ready to piece the final units, I like to put the tip of the geese on the top so I can see where the triangles intersect. In the photo below, I am highlighting to the spot where I aim my needle so that I don’t lose my points.

Quilting ideas

I think the Filght quilt block will make an awesome border around a panel! Stay tuned because I need to do some shopping before I can bring that idea to life.

Another tip is to choose your flying geese fabrics carefully. I tend to stick with tone-on-tone or small prints for flying geese blocks because the triangle corners can chop up large prints or directional fabric in strange ways. You can also create flying geese units with half-square triangles if you like to sew HSTs better than flying geese.

Do you need a special flying geese ruler? I know there are lots of specialty rulers available and I have tried them but I always come back to my basic square rulers to trim flying geese. So do what works for you!