A Leader/Ender Takeover

Turkey Tracks: September 4, 2020

A Leader/Ender Takeover

There is always some point where a leader/ender project gets big enough that it becomes a primary project.

Just to remind, Bonnie Hunter (Quiltville.com) pioneered the leader/ender method of sewing where one works on a primary quilt and rather than breaking thread, one feeds in a sewing task from another quilt.

One of my two leader/ender projects has reached that stage where it has engulfed my design wall. There is nothing to do now but finish it and sew the top together. And meanwhile, the “tree” blocks with solid backgrounds and scrappy tree trunks will become THE primary leader/ender project.

I’ve wanted to make a scrappy bigger block flying geese quilt for YEARS now. This goose block is 3 by 6 finished. Right now I’ve got 10 rows wide by 20 deep, which is about 60-inches square. But I’m thinking it may need to be just a bit bigger. Maybe 72 (12 rows) by 75 (25 rows deep). I’m trying to off-set the large blocks of color (like 4 of one type) so that it reads really scrappy. Thus, the single and double geese blocks that will help that effort.

And now I’m wondering about going EVEN bigger in the future. That would make a VERY graphic flying geese quilt.

I like the way Tara Faughnan, in the online class The Color Collective, played with her improv idea of a “goose” form in solids and with a bigger block for her “Stacks” quilt—which lops off the point of the triangle and which highlights the formation of the side triangles into a very visible element. (This pic is from my “Stacks” quilt.) As I recall, the block finishes at 9 inches wide.

I am reversing my rows of geese so the rows lie up and down. That forms a parallelogram form rather than a triangle, which would form if the geese all pointed the same way. Made in solids, the parallelogram slash could be quite interesting. And what if the slash was the same color here and there???

And so it goes…