Pinwheels quilt block

January 30, 1933-Nancy Cabot presents her Pinwheels quilt block pattern.  Not at all what we would think of these days when thinking of pinwheels but I love it!  Do you see the four tessellating pinwheels?

She said this pattern reminded her of the days of making paper pinwheels pinned to a stick.  I remember doing this with my grandma.  Nancy showed this block being made from only three colors because she thought "the uniformity of a standard color scheme adds distinction."

This is another of her 5 patch quilt blocks in which I refuse to figure out the math for a 6" block.




So, to make a 5" block-

1.  Sew 9 four patch blocks using only two fabrics-a background and fabric #1-1 1/2" (1" finished) floral is the background and pink is my color #1 in my example.  A quick way to do this is to make strip sets with each fabric being cut 1" wide to make a sewn strip 1 1/2" wide.  Cut the sets into 1" pieces and sew these into 4 patch blocks.  You need 18" total of strip sets.

2.  Sew 12 half square triangle blocks-1 1/2" (1" finished) One side of the triangle is your background fabric and the other half is your color #2 or purple as used in mine above.  Use 2" squares and make these 2 at a time by following the method of drawing a diagonal line, sewing on each side and cutting on the diagonal line to yield 2 half square triangles.  Trim the new blocks to 1 1/2" or use triangles on a roll, no trimming necessary!

3.  Cut 4) 1 1/2" squares of your background fabric.

4.  Sew your units together following the diagram carefully.  It's a little tricky!

A similar block can be found in Electric Quilt and BlockBase as #1142c.  It is a 4 patch not a 5 patch and the lights and darks are flipped but it makes more stars when sewn together as shown in the drawing below.

I made the block at the right before I decided to do this sew along.  It is made 6" finished.  Very easy, the 4 patch blocks finish at 1 1/2" and so do the half square triangle blocks.