How to Make the Blocks in the Northwoods Lodge Quilt

Published August 2026

Join Jen for a look at the Northwoods Lodge quilt, a beginner friendly wildlife quilt built around the Moda collection of the same name. This tutorial covers the three tools that do most of the work, and includes a full refresher on the Ultimate Flying Geese Tool, which makes four perfect units at a time in both sizes this quilt uses.

In this video, you'll learn:

• How the panel gets fussy cut into blocks and corner squares.
• How to read the Ultimate Flying Geese Tool for any finished size.
• How to make four flying geese units at once.
• How the trim one and trim two functions square up your units.
• Why finished and unfinished sizes marry up the way they do.

Check the links for everything you need.

Introduction

If you love a wildlife quilt that stays beginner friendly, this one's worth a look. It's built on a Moda collection called Northwoods Lodge, full of woodland animals in colors that feel very Pacific Northwest, which suits us just fine over in Idaho.

There's a lot happening on the surface, so let's unpack it. Once you see how few techniques are actually involved, the whole thing gets a lot less intimidating!

The quilt breaks down into three things: fussy cut animals from the panel, pine cone squares in the four corners, and flying geese units in two different sizes. That's it.

The geese appear twice, at two different scales. The larger units bracket the fussy cut panel blocks, and the smaller ones sit in two opposite corners of the outer border. Living in Idaho, we couldn't get enough geese, and the two sizes give the quilt a lot of movement without adding a single new technique.

What You'll Need

The three tools that matter most

• Ultimate Flying Geese Tool. It makes four units at a time with real precision and very little waste.
• Creative Grids 6.5" square ruler, for fussy cutting the animals out of the panel
• Creative Grids 4.5" square ruler, for the pine cone corner squares

Also good to have

• Creative Grids 9" seam guide tool, for drawing your sewing lines
• Spinning mat. All three of the tools above work beautifully with one.
• Rotary cutter with a fresh blade. Fussy cutting is exacting work, so a sharp blade really pays off.
• Patchwork pins
• A light gray thread - any light gray will do the job.

Fussy Cutting the Panel

Two different cuts come out of the panel.

• The animals get fussy cut with the 6.5" ruler, which extracts each one cleanly so it sits right into its block.
• The pine cones, also part of the panel, get cut with the 4.5" ruler and go into the four corners of the quilt.

A Refresher on the Ultimate Flying Geese Tool

A big reason this quilt goes together so quickly is the speed of this tool. Making flying geese one at a time can be accurate, though it's often hit and miss. This way you make four at once, which means a whole block comes together in one go.

Reading the tool

The Northwoods Lodge quilt uses two sizes:

• Letter D, finishing at 2" x 4". These are the outer border geese.
• Letter F, finishing at 3" x 6". These frame the fussy cut panel blocks.

To find your cutting sizes, run across the tool to your letter and then look straight up. For letter D, you'll see cut one 5.75" square, and continuing across, cut four 3.25" squares. The large square becomes the main V of the goose, and the four small ones become the sky.

Letter F works the same way: one 7.75" square and four 4.25" squares.

The letter is doing more than naming a size. You'll come back to it at the trimming stage, when the tool asks you which letter you're working in. Make a note of it before you start sewing and the trim step will make immediate sense.

Making Four Flying Geese at Once

Step 1: Draw your lines

On the back of each of your four small squares, mark the diagonal. You can draw a single line corner to corner, or use a seam guide to draw two lines, a quarter inch either side of the diagonal, which is our preference.

Sewing on a drawn line beats tracking a quarter inch away from one. It's simply easier to stay accurate when you have something to follow with your needle. Drawing a single diagonal works perfectly well too, so use whichever suits you.

Step 2: Add the first two squares

1. Place two small squares on opposite corners of your large square, right sides together. They'll overlap slightly in the middle.
2. Pin them in place.
3. Trim that overlap away. Get underneath with your scissors and cut only the top layer, taking care not to catch the piece behind it.

That little overlap is worth removing. Extra fabric sitting inside the unit works against you when you're trying to get precise points, and the overlap isn't doing anything useful. Snipping it out keeps everything flat where it counts.

Step 3: Sew, cut, and press

1. Unpin and sew, using a standard stitch length.
2. Lay any straight edge along the diagonal and cut corner to corner between your two seams.
3. Press away.

Step 4: Add the remaining two squares

You've only used two of your four small squares so far. Set a third into the corner of each unit, pin, sew, cut, and press away again.

That gives you four flying geese units, all of them deliberately oversized and ready to trim.

Trimming With the Tool

The tool has a trim one function, and rotated 180 degrees, a trim two function. Start with trim one.

1. Find your letter on the trim one side. Working in letter D, run along to D.
2. Set the tool down so the dashed line for your letter sits inside the triangle of your unit. When it seats correctly, the right side and the top of your unit are exposed and the left side and bottom sit under the acrylic.
3. Cut the two exposed sides.
4. Rotate to trim two, line up your letter again, and check the fit. You're looking for the lines to land on the point and right in the V.
5. Cut the remaining two sides.

This is where a spinning mat earns its money. You'll be rotating the unit between trim one and trim two, and being able to turn the mat rather than pick up the block keeps everything registered exactly where you left it.

You get perfect flying geese units every single time.

Why the Sizes Marry Up

Worth pausing on, because it explains the whole design.

The tool gives you finished sizes. Letter F finishes at 3" x 6", so unfinished it measures 3.5" x 6.5". The panel animals were fussy cut to 6.5", which means the geese and the center block share the same 6.5" edge and go together without a fight.

Finished plus a half inch gives you unfinished. A quarter inch seam allowance on each side accounts for the difference. Once you're comfortable moving between the two numbers, patterns get much easier to read.

Putting the Quilt Together

Your pattern walks you through assembling the blocks, the outer border with its corner geese, and the pine cone corner squares.

Wondering whether a single purpose tool is worth it? This one gets used far beyond a single quilt. Once you've made flying geese four at a time and trimmed them to a perfect size, it's hard to go back to any other method!

A longer, more detailed tutorial on the Ultimate Flying Geese Tool is available on our YouTube channel if you'd like to go deeper.

This quilt really does have it all. The animals, those cozy woodland colors, and two sizes of flying geese to keep it interesting. The backing was chosen with you in mind, and it coordinates beautifully with the pillowcase kit!