Whirling Pinwheel quilt block

Whirling Pinwheel

May 29,1933-Nancy Cabot introduced her Whirling Pinwheel block by saying,"The dazzling pinwheel provided the incentive in the designing of this quilt pattern."  She explains that older quilts were "pieced in red and white, portraying as realistically as possible the flaming sparks of the exploding pyrotechnical piece in motion."

She has me confused!  She starts by talking about pinwheels and switches to fireworks I think.

She also noted that "other colors or prints might be used to produce an equally effective result."

Notice that the center of the block is the Swastika design that was introduced back on February 27, 1933!

This Whirling Pinwheel block is from a German blogger.  The post is quite interesting.

There is an old pattern called Rolling Pinwheel from 1895 here.  The pattern suggests using white, deep green and light green fabrics.




There are several ways this block can be sewn together. The red and gold one above was paper pieced.  I made mine from half square triangle blocks and flying geese blocks.  It could also be made from half square triangle blocks without any flying geese units.

Here's what my parts look like-

To make a 6" block like this, you need-

4-1 1/2" squares of background fabric
4-1 1/2" X 2 1/2" rectangles of background fabric
8-half square triangle blocks-1" finished
8-flying geese blocks-1"X2" finished (4 of each with colors reversed as shown)

To make 8 half square triangles at once use the Magic 8 technique using 3 3/4" squares.

The Whirling Pinwheel block can be found in Electric Quilt's Blockbase program as #1350.

Tomorrow-Tulip Wreath