Wandering Geese

This morning I braved the -12 degree weather outside and the knee deep snow to snap a few pictures of my latest finish of two wandering flying geese place mats.  I made them for my mom's upcoming birthday in two weeks.  Hopefully she will like them - her and my tastes vary quite a bit.  However, she loves it when I send her something handmade and she does like blue, so the odds of her liking them are pretty good. 
I've been a long time admirer of the flying geese quilt design.  It's such a traditional yet modern design that has endless possibilities.  Well, I had never actually made any flying geese.  They were one of those things that always seemed to be on my want to do / want to learn list, yet I just never got around to making any flying geese.  The other day, while scrolling through Pinterest, I stumbled upon a paper pieced flying geese pattern that I really really really liked.  Also, I realized my mom's birthday was quickly approaching and decided to give this pattern a try. 

It took a little while to decide on colors for the geese and the background especially since I am really trying to stick with the Sew My Stash 2015 and really look through my stash to find something that will work for a project instead of just going out and buying new fabric for every new project.  This challenge might seem a little restrictive, but actually, I've been enjoying it because it has allowed me to really take a good look at what I have, what fabrics I tend to actually use (thus get a better idea of what fabrics to buy in the future), and it has forced me to use fabrics that otherwise I would just hoard because I love them so much.  After combing through my stash for a while, I finally found fabrics that would not only work for this project, but I loved how they played together.  These place mats ended up being made 100% percent from fabrics, batting, and thread I had in my stash!

For the flying geese, I settled on a selection of six aqua and white prints and went with a Carolyn Friedlander print from her Botanics line for the background (this is one of those much hoarded prints but it felt so good to use it and see it in action).  I really love how the flying geese just pop on the charcoal gray background. 

I new that since these would be used as place mats by my mom, I wanted to do a really dense quilting on them.  I had recently see a few people on Instagram do a dense diamond grid straight line quilting pattern and I decided to go with that.  The lines are about a 1/4 inch apart so even those these place mats measure at 16"x20" finished, the quilting ate through a lot of thread.  I was so glad that I had found two spools left over from my Fair Isle quilt that matched the background perfectly - hurray!  I do love though how the dense quilting gives these such great texture without taking away from the boldness of the flying geese. The blue bird print I used for the backing on the place mats is left over from some sewing projects I did last spring.  I knew my mom would like it because I had made her an zipper poach out of it which she uses every day in her purse.

 I so love how these turned out - especially the happy accident of these two owl peaking out of the flying geese. 

Happy Birthday Mom!  I hope you know how much I love you because these place mats are gorgeous and would look great on my table too! :)