Block · Geese and triangles
Flying Geese
Triangles flying in rows: known from about 1840 in New England and a building block of countless blocks.
- Other names
- Wild Goose Chase · Gæssetræk · Flyvende gæs
- Known from
- USA, New England from about 1840
- First known print
- As "Wild Goose Chase" in the Ladies Art Company's catalogue of the late 1890s and in Marie Webster's list of 1915.
- Origin
- Unknown, as for most traditional blocks
- Family
- Geese and triangles
- Difficulty
- Medium · Triangles, geese and other angles cut with a ruler
- Grid
- 2 × 4 cells
History
Barbara Brackman traces the pattern to New England about 1840, when printed cottons became cheap enough to cut into many small pieces. The oldest example with a date is from 1847 and belongs to the Brooklyn Museum.
For a long time the printed name was Wild Goose Chase. The Ladies Art Company of St. Louis, the first company to sell quilt patterns, had it in its catalogue in the late 1890s, but drew the triangles in the wrong proportions, Brackman notes. The name Flying Geese is not in Webster's list of 1915.
How it is used
The classic setting is vertical rows of geese alternating with wide strips of one fabric, a "strippy", which was a good way to use a fine chintz. The goose is also part of many other blocks, such as the points of Sawtooth Star.
In QuiltCrafter a goose is one unit, twice as wide as it is high; Tall geese is the tall, narrow kind.
Quilts with the block
Flying Geese
6 × 3 blocks · 51½" × 47"
Related blocks
Sources
The text is our own, written from the sources below. Photos of old quilts with the block are in the museums' collections.
- Article Barbara Brackman: Flying Geese – Wild Goose Chase (2022)
- Book Marie D. Webster: Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them (1915)
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Underground Railroad Quilts?