Day 23:Weathervane

Can you guess from the photo what block I made for day 23?  Before I get to that I want to take time so share some photos I snapped yesterday.  We are blessed to live in a rural area and right here in town we have one of the premier locations for the annual courtship of Clark's and Western Grebe's.  They do some pretty interesting things, one of them being a "weed dance.  We witnessed a couple of these and several rushings too, though I will have to try for a photo of that on another day as in unison the run across the top of the water together.  It is quite a sight and I was too mesmerized watching to get any photos this time.

I do have a photo that a friend of mine, who is an amazing photographer, captured a few years ago.  It is an exciting time for our local photographers and we will have to be good about sharing the locations while practicing our proper social distancing.  We did good at taking turns yesterday.

Since I took the afternoon to go out and play in the sunshine, it feels like winter is about to lose its grip, I did not get this post written for the block.  So today there will be two posts, one for each day's block.
For Day 23 I went with the yellow-orange and cerulean blue.  As soon as I chose them I thought of my brothers whose high school colors were orange and blue.  We did not attend the same high school as they choose our city's polytechnic high school option and both learned some amazing skills; from drafting to metalurgy and all sorts of things in between.

I will mention once again that starch is your friend when working with these smaller blocks.  I starch the fabric before cutting it to size for the best results.

This block has some tiny Flying Geese in it.  I made these even more oversized as usual as I found it easier to get a good finished size.  Be sure and download a copy of the General Instruction sheet if you are not sure how to make these using the method I prefer.  I want to show you here that I sew with the top triangle facing as shown.

And keep it the same direction by sewing from the other side of my presser foot on the second side.

I remember the first time I used this method I thought they looked pretty strange when I cut them apart and pressed them.

When adding the last square I will sew with the units in this same direction on  both sides of the drawn line.

I love how quickly I get four identical Flying Geese from this method.

And I love how easy they are to trim with my littlest Bloc Loc ruler.  If you have not had a chance to try one I want to share that I am currently having a Giveaway for the 2" x 4" size.  You can enter for your chance to win by visiting my post from April 1st HERE.  But hurry entries are due by midnight Pacific Time tonight.

The only other tip I want to share is as you sew these pieces together sew slowly.  I have given pressing directions that allow for the seams to lock together-meaning they are facing in opposite directions.  Doing so is one thing that helps to get perfectly matched seams, but it really does help to SLOW down as you sew over them.  I find by doing that I can avoid having to pin and for some reason I just do not like having to stop and pin my matching seams together...a bit of laziness I suspect.

I also sew these together with the corner units on top.  This allowed me to watch that seam closely and use my stiletto if needed to hold the pressed seam allowance down too, which is useful when the seam is pointing in the opposite direction as the one shown here.

Finally let me close with just a couple of more photos from the lake yesterday.  

Bufflehead

Pair of Eared Grebes

Click here for pdf version of today's block.

Have a blessed day and Happy Quilting!