It seems like it has been a LONG time since I have pieced anything!! To be honest, I have looked back over the last 18 months of posts, and I haven’t found any place where I actually pieced half-square triangles, or flying geese or ANYTHING.

I did some paper piecing last May and a lot of string piecing to make the Color Wheel squiggle (which still needs to be finished), but no traditional piecing. That is scary!!!

I am still trying to “up my game” with my work so wanted to be super careful on the first Quilt-of-Valor top that I am making. And part of doing this is to try some different techniques for piecing to see exactly what works best for me.

The first step in my QOV was to make 72 flying geese units. Since I wasn’t feeling particularly sure of myself, I decided to cut squares for the corner triangles and then sew on the diagonal…..

This method gives a fairly accurate size, but there is a lot of wasted fabric. Since I don’t have much fabric (cough…cough), and I COULDN’T allow that to happen, I went ahead and sewed a second seam approximately 1/2 inch from the first seam……

Then, I cut between these two lines……

….and ended up with a Flying Geese block AND an additional “freebie” half-square triangle patch…..

First step completed and NO un-sewing!! Although I did run out of bobbin thread and had sewed 7 pieces before I realized it….ARGH!!!