Perfect Pinwheels

Well, almost perfect! This is my first attempt at a real quilt (sorry, Margaret, I had no idea what I was doing with Selah's!). I would rate this design a 4 out of 5 stars on the difficulty. I probably should have started out with something much simpler, but I am so proud that I made it work! (Typing that makes me remember all of the times my machine came to a screeching halt, and I would look up at Philip with my most pitiful WHY-does-this-only-happen-to-me-when-I-want-to-sew face, and Philip would do his best Tim Gunn impression and say, "Make it work.") By the way, in the last post on this quilt, I was getting wildly irritated by my machine not wanting to sew through four thin layers of fabric. Thanks to my dear friend who happens to be a sewing genius, Mrs. Rush, I realize I had the needle in backwards--so yes, it does matter which way the flat side is facing. This quilt is made of four main pinwheels each with two coordinating fabrics, plus the white cotton. Fabric.com has a Design Board that makes it easy to pick fabrics you like, narrow it down to what goes together, and easily order.  Plus, they always have online coupon codes for free shipping and 10-15% off.

 

The back is a floral pattern of green roses.

This is my favorite quilt square, which happened by mistake! I originally had a white fabric with tall pink flowers called Dandelion. It's hard to tell online that it is giant, making my 2 1/2" triangles pretty much just white with a random pink line somewhere. I had another "make it work" moment and used the back side of the stripe fabric from Margaret's quilt.  Her quilt was much brighter, so the "inside out" side worked just fine.

The actual "quilting" part of the quilt was the hardest for me since I hand quilted the last one.  I used a cardboard template to cut four stripes and a pattern marker to make tiny little scores in the fabric as my guide.  I quilted every other square in a left to right, top to bottom pattern because it would have been madness to do every square.  I pretty much would have died without the Diary of a Quilter's Beginner Quilting Series.  This girl is brilliant, and so very patient to explain so much confusion!