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Monday, March 1, 2021

Stay at Home Round Robin - Pinwheels

It's the last round of the Quilting Gail's Stay at Home Round Robin, and this time it's pinwheels.

seven different borders on a round robin quilt

And boy, did this round ever increase the size of this quilt top, making it one of the largest quilts I've ever made at 88" x 88". It's too big to fit on my design wall, and I barely have enough floor space for a decent picture. I had to stand on my bed to take this one!

But I really like this pinwheel round, and there are elements of it I'd like to use in another quilt. I won't tell you which - you'll just have to wait till I get another quilt designed.

A little about my design process for this round. I knew I wanted it to be blue again, with small bits of red to tie back to the center block's patriotic quilt. So, I made a few pinwheels, using the same light blue fabric from the flying geese round. It's always a good design element to repeat fabrics or colors throughout a quilt to provide unity.

red and blue pinwheels on a quilt border

Now what to do? In the picture above, I have somewhat of a layout idea, and decide to make a few cream pinwheels. After pondering their placement, I added the extra blue background in different widths to make those pinwheels dance along the border.

red and white pinwheels dancing in a quilt border

Oh I really like that! But once again, my idea was thwarted by not having enough light blue background fabric to cover more pinwheels and sashing. Dang it!! So now what?

While pondering that question, I decided I didn't like this pinwheel border right next to the green one. The color and block transition just looked odd. Alright then, how about finishing up the blue dot fabric from those flying geese to add a transition border? And more unity of course!

blue dot transition border in a quilt

Much better. The red, green, blue and cream dots in that fabric does a great job between the two borders, joining them together.

Moving on to solving the gaps between the pinwheels. With no other light blue in the stash that was a close match, I decided to sew the pinwheels together, removing the spaces between them. That left large spaces on each end of the pinwheel sets. After testing out a few more blues, I dove into my patriotic bin, and settled on a dark blue print with red, white and light blue crosses on it.

dark blue fabric with red and white crosses as a border filler fabric

That works okay, and having spent a few hours agonizing over this pinwheel round (see all those scraps I was playing with?), I was satisfied well enough to finish it up.

seven rounds of a round robin quilt

Though this pinwheel round is not quite what I wanted, it still looks fine, and I'm declaring this quilt top DONE! Now to find backing that's large enough (ya, right!), and get 'er quilted. Plan on seeing the final finish March 29, when there's a SAHRR Finish linky party over at Quilting Gail's - I hope to see your project there!

Do check out all the pinwheel rounds from my fellow round robin quilting friends this week. If you're sewing along with us, share your round robin at Quilting Gail's SAHRR linky party.



See you again March 29. Until then,
Happy Quilting!




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13 comments:

  1. Those dancing pinwheels look great! A nice (and really big) finish!

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  2. That was a good idea to make the pinwheels in 2 sizes.

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  3. Wonderful! Going back I am seeing things I missed before - so much to see! I can see a "windswept" quilt pantograph to keep the motion going!

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  4. I love it! It's so fun and cheerful. I'd love to see how you quilt it (and if there was a pattern for this quilt, I'd buy it!)

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  5. Love the large and small pinwheels ... so clever! And they look fantastic! It'll be fun to see how you quilt this quilt!!

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  6. Hi Susan! Oh!! Your pinwheels are just smashing. They look exactly like they are spinning in the wind or dancing - perhaps from the same wind that is spinning the corner pinwheels. ~smile~ Roseanne

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  7. Susan, those dancing pinwheels are adorable! Great finish.

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  8. This is my favorite of your rows, hands down. I mean, it's so perfect! The different sized pinwheels. The different shades of blue. The alternating red and white pinwheels. It's spectacular!

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  9. Just wonderful finish - well finished top. I love the way it turned out - it will be fun to see your finish!

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  10. It looks fantastic Susan!!!

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  11. LOVE the touch of whimsy you added with those (dancing) Pinwheels, Susan!!

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  12. Oh those pinwheels! Susan it’s the perfect finish for your SAHRR quilt.

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Thank you so much for commenting...you just made my day!