Pinwheel Baby Quilt

I don’t like wasting fabric. In fact I keep even the smallest piece of fabric. It goes into either one of two bins. One for larger size pieces for future quilt projects or one for pieces too small for quilting which one can use for instance as stuffing for a dog bed.
 
Anyway, as I was going through the former bin, I discovered fabrics from a collection called Chinoise by Studio K for Clothworks. I bought this a few years ago for a different quilt. Beautiful floral patterns with birds and Chinese lanterns in soft pinks, blues, yellows, greens, white and brown.
 
This is the quilt I made a few years ago.

I wasn’t planning on making the Pinwheel Baby Quilt this month, but when I found these pieces I started playing around. Soon I had quite a few small triangles cut out which led to making half square triangles (HST’s). (HST units are squares made up of two 90 degree triangles sewn together on the bias to form a square.)

I decided to pair the Chinoise triangles with light colored (mostly white) fabrics from the scrap bin.
 
In order to make a pinwheel block, you have to arrange four of these HST’s into a four patch so the light colored fabrics always sit next to the darker fabric. This arrangement gives the block a feeling of motion.

According to the National Parks Service’s Quilt Discovery Experience, the Pinwheel block goes back to the early 1800’s. It is no surprise that the pinwheel block represents the blades of water pumping windmills from back then.
 
Each Pinwheel block in this quilt’s finished size equals a small 2.5 inch (6cm) square. This can be the downside to using small scraps. It is not a quick process and it can become a little tedious at times sewing such small blocks. The upside to this is that once you finished the quilt, you know you’ve made good use of your little scraps and it did not end up in the trash.
 
For this quilt I made 36 pinwheels. I divided them into four groups of 12 pinwheels according to colors and fabric design. I alternated these with white blocks to form four rows. In between the pinwheel rows, I used Robert Kaufman’s Kona cotton solid Pfd Bleach white.

I did not have enough fabric left for the back. Big was my surprise when I found some of this fabric online. It is called White Floral, as can be seen in the picture.

I quilted the whole quilt in vertical lines, 1.25 inches (3cm) apart.

Fortunately I did have enough fabric scraps left for the scrappy binding.

One mistake I made was starting this project without a pattern or plan. Usually I plan a quilt by sketching it out or drawing it using computer design software. With this quilt it has not been the case and that led to a lot of frustration. Fortunately, everything worked out in the end. The result:  a cute little baby quilt and my scrap bin a bit emptier than before.

Dimensions: approximately 29 inches x 39 inches (74cm x 99cm) - Baby size quilt