On a wild goose chase!

"December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats."
- Dylan Thomas, "A Child's Christmas in Wales"

When Bonnie at Quiltville showed us her latest antique quilt, I was goosed by inspiration! Sometimes she'd show us an antique quilt and I'd think "wow, look at that piecing!" or "oh man, how'd she have the patience to do all that" or "how pretty!"  But the one with the scrappy-stringy pieced geese?  It  talked to me - it called out and said "MAKE ME!!"

My first thought was to replicate the quilt as it was made by the quilter, but I'm changing the colors a bit so it won't look exactly  like the original - I think it's only fair that Bonnie gets dibs on replicating it exactly, after all it was her find!  I have a sort of mottled brown that I'll substitute for the alternating solid green strips, and I'm using a sort of off-pink-cantaloupe-y solid for the goose wings.

I went to my stash of unused (and under-appreciated!) homespuns and started cutting strips for the goose body. I didn't have any already cut because I haven't been using the homespuns, just hoarding - uh stashing - em! I'm also using recycled shirts, but I have just a handful of those.

Because I'm a creature of get-er-done and instant gratification, I'll be paper piecing my geese from start to finish! 

I found a flying geese pattern in EQ called "Flying Geese V" and printed it at 6 x 12, this gave me 4 geese stacked in a row; it'll cut down on the number of seams.

All my strings have been pieced on 5" squares of phone book paper - each square will give me the body for two geese.

So here's the first group I did, not bad!

Homespuns by their very nature are loosely woven, so I hit each block with a little spray starch before I cut them apart.  Some will be cut crosswise, just for variety!

I think this is a very pretty quilt, and I thank Bonnie for her generosity in sharing it with us!  It also seems to be a very quick quilt to make, owing to the paper foundation piecing ... I wonder if the original quilter did hers on foundations?? 

Well, it's the podiatrist today, my last medical appointment of 2012 .. sew forth and sew on, have a great Tuesday!