Pinwheel Joy

Back in September I started this quilt, with a few layout ideas. I didn't actually end up going with any of my ideas from that post, and by Thanksgiving had decided on a pinwheel pattern.

This quilt took a whole lot more time than I was expecting, but I was so glad to have it done in time for Christmas, finishing the binding on December 17th.

The coloured fabrics I purchased back in I believe it was spring 2007 from Fabricland (some of the fabrics they still carry, some have been discontinued). I'm generally not too great at matching fabrics so well, but I took the cues from the multi-coloured green fabric and tried to find ones that matched it, and was quite please with how it turned out. The white is a recycled cotton sheet... they don't make them like they used to, so good for quilting.

The quilt is a lap / tv watching size. I made it as big as I could, I didn't have enough fabric left for any more rows.

If I was to redo the quilt, I definitely would have bought a rotary cutter, ruler, and matt beforehand. Some of my blocks, especially the first ones, were not quite so square, or triangularly perfect, which led to some puckering and mismatched edges. And the white cotton wasn't the same thickness as the coloured cottons, which made it somewhat difficult to match the corners perfectly in all cases... I ended up ripping out a lot of stitches and redoing many.

The quilt batting was a thin polyester, the only previous quilt I had ever made (in 1996/97) had led me to believe that only fluffy batts existed. I quilted in straight lines lengthwise as I was pressed for time, otherwise I would have liked to have quilted diagonally. I had a lot of problems with the thread breaking, which was eventually solved by using a lesser tension setting.

Overall, I loved the way it turned out, but I don't think I would make another quilt in this pattern... unless I was wanting a project that would take forever!