Quilting Shortcut - The Easy Way to quit drawing diagonal lines to create flying geese or dogear quilt block segments

Okay, so sometimes I like to find shortcuts to save me time. Yep, I call that making the most of the little time I have to do one of my favorite things . . . quilt.

One of the most frustrating (and time-consuming and to me, the least fun) parts of making quilt blocks is drawing that diagonal line on the wrong side of the squares when I am making a flying geese segment, or putting dog-ears on a segment. 

So when I was up one morning a few days ago (about 4 a.m. - yes, because that is my best time to sew) I was trying to finish the sashing pieces for my Christmas Star Quilt and after cutting about 100 3-inch squares and thinking about having to then draw a diagonal line on the wrong side to use as a guide for the flying geese segments, using all my time drawing instead of sewing, I said 'there has to be a better way.!'

And there is.

All you have to do - is take a piece of painters tape. (I keep some in my quilting tools for a variety of uses - I will list some at the end of this post.

Line the tape up with the center of the needle sewing line and the front of your sewing machine bed. (I have a Janome 6600p).

So I place the sashing piece and the square, right sides together, on one end of the background - then line up the corner at the needle and the bottom corner with the edge of the painters tape.

Viola! No drawn line, 

but a perfect seam.

Hallelujah! 

And here is the finished quilt top.

Auditioning border fabrics - these didn't make the cut.

Made my scrappy-patch units like Jenny Doan with the Missouri Star Quilt Company
then put them 3x4 together. Click here to see how to make them fast and easy out of
5" squares (Charm Packs) or cut your own. I used a couple of Christmas packs I had
(although I didn't use the entire pack - saved some of them for another project)

And finished, used a 2.5 inch finished red inner border
(with a little squiggly white pattern you can't see in the photo)
and then used the same black with music notes on the 5.5 inch outside border.
I want to quilt this using a new pattern I saw on Leah Day's blog