A gross of geese

Yep, 144 of them to be exact.

(Each of those piles above contains four geese. I used this tutorial for piecing flying geese four at a time, and it is GENIUS. Seriously, I cannot imagine what I would have done if I'd had to piece them all individually and sew all those seams on the bias.)

Sewing these made me think a lot about muscle memory and how practice really does make perfect when it comes to making things with your hands. That's fascinating to me. I started analyzing some of it--the way I learned exactly how far to put the needle into the fabric in order to avoid the fabric pulling once I started sewing; or the paradoxical insight that watching the needle wouldn't give me an accurate seam, I had to just focus on a tiny corner of the presser foot instead. But there's more, I'm sure, that I haven't articulated but that my body has noticed.

I've done a lot of sewing over the past couple of weeks (not just these geese, but a couple other projects that I'll share in a bit), and I can see that I've gotten a lot more skilled, which mostly means faster and more precise with my seams. It's really glorious.

Next up: a quartet of log cabins!