Been Away but NOW I'm BACK!

Hello everyone!

I've been away for a while!  I started a new job and it took up a great deal of my bandwidth.  But I'm back to blogging now! 

CC

Layer Cakes into Pinwheels

I recently posted a picture of the quilt I made for our first Grandson. 

Grandson's Quilt

I promised to post the instructions to assemble this easy quilt.  Before I get started I will confess that I am NOT a photographer!  You'll need to excuse my pictures - they will get the point across and give you a decent pictorial lesson, but the pictures are not great!  That said.....

First of all you'll need to either purchase a "layer cake" (which is a pre-cut bundle found at most quilt stores) or cut 40 squares of fabric 10"x10".  I like layer cakes because you get a great variety of fabrics and they all go together without you having to match up different pieces of material etc.

The first thing I do is lay out the layer cake in two groups like this

The criteria for the two groups - patterns in one pile and solids (or almost solids) in the other.

Once you get these stacked up you need to make up 20 "pairs".  The pairs will form the pinwheels.  here is an example of a completed pinwheel:

Make the two that you pair "match".  I try to take one fabric from the print pile and one from the solid/almost solid pile.  I should caution you to match up all 20 pairs, you may have to adjust the pairs to make it work out. 

Once you have your pairs set up you will be pinning a pair together like this:

Making sure to line up and match all the sides and corners!  This is VERY important. 

An aside:  In my quilting experiences I've said to myself "oh don't worry about that not lining up perfectly it won't matter, I mean how much can 1/8th of an inch matter in a 90x70 quilt?"  Trust me, save yourself aggravation - IT MATTERS!!!! 

Now sew all four edges with 1/4" seams. 

Then take your squares to the ironing board and STARCH THEM.  I starch them VERY VERY heavily.  when I'm done the fabric is almost board stiff.  WHY?   In the next step you are going to cut them into TRIANGLES!!!  Triangles have bias and bias means STRETCH (a dreaded word to a quilter).  By starching the living daylights out of your squares, the triangles will not stretch as much.

After you starch them to death you need to cut them into triangles.  I am assuming everyone knows how to use a rotary cutter, ruler and mat.  If not, email me and I'll help you.  So make your first cut corner to corner like this:

Now turn and cut the triangles in half so that you now have:

Okay now the fun part!  Press your triangles open.

An aside:  PRESS does not mean IRON!  Iron means to move the hot iron back and forth over the material.  PRESS means to press down with the hot iron, lift it and press down again.  If you iron your triangles it may cause them to stretch out of shape.  PRESS!!!!

Another aside:  Before I press anything I always "set the seam".  This means PRESSING the seam line BEFORE opening the seams to press them open.

When you are done it should look like this:

 NOTE that the red ones on the left show the backside, the green ones on the right are the front.

Lets look a bit closer at the squares, if you do you'll see each corner has a rabbit ear like this (the black arrow points to this):

The color on this one is horrible but it shows the rabbits ear the best.

You should clip these ears on all four corners so that your corners are smooth.  All trimmed up they should look like this:

I'm one to save just about every scrap I make however I can easily throw these little tips out!

Lay out the squares.  I'll lay mine out like this:

NOTE THE MISTAKE in the red one. I didn't realize this until I looked at them laid out for this picture!  this is the reason I lay out these squares.  Plus I can begin designing

From here on out the sky's the limit here is one idea (besides pinwheels)

If you want to "stretch" the fabric you have to make a larger quilt, you could alternate pinwheels with solid fabric.  I laid out a piece of fabric and then laid the blocks on it to show you what it might look like:

The sky is the limit.  I've seen people who toss all of the the triangles in a bag and draw them out randomly and assemble them.  In my opinion this would work really well if you were using scraps instead of a layer cake.  Your choice.

Assembling the pinwheels.

I can't stress enough to line up seams and things here. 

Lay out the pin wheel

Now flip the left square on top of the right one and pin it. 

Before you sew the 1/4 inch seam make sure the two seams match up like this:

Sew your seam and then PRESS the block open.

I line it up again to make sure I'm still setting the blocks up correctly. 

Now flip the top to the bottom pinning and making sure the seams line up.

Sew the 1/4 inch seam and then PRESS the block open.

You should take the time to square up the finished block.  The center is where taking the time to line up the seams really pays off.  This is what the center of the finished block should look like:

GOOD LUCK on your pinwheel quilt! 

The quilt for my grandson took me an afternoon to piece.  This project moves along quickly and it is impressive when you're done.  I add borders (cut strips to 3.5" wide, makes a 3" border) and then finish as you wish.  My grandson's quilt was quilted in the ditch and then hand bound.

If you make one of these quilts, please send me a picture so I can post it!

What's around the next bend?  I have taken a break from quilting and sewing too for the past 2 months!  I think my next project might be a hand bag - if so I'll post pics and instructions!