WIP - Giant pinwheels

I feel like this week all I have been doing is wrestling with huge swathes of fabric with not much to show for my efforts.  I absolutely love making quilts but I find putting borders on to be the most loathesome part of the process.  Do you like putting them on?

Anyway, enough bitching about borders.  A few weeks ago after watching a Missouri Star Quilt Co video on You Tube (I love their tutorials!) I decide to use their method to make pinwheels on a layer cake.  Here is the video if you care to watch it.  In the clip they use charm squares but the idea is the same.



The only thing I would say about this method of making pinwheels is that because you stitch the straight grain on the fabric in your seam then cut in an "x" through the centre of the square, all the outer edges of your pinwheel are bias edges - this can make them very stretchy so be careful and use starch to help stabilise everything.

I wanted a kind of soft wash effect so I used a Cabbages and Roses "Athill Range" layer cake and here is the result.

I plan to use the Quilt in a Day Scalloped Edge ruler to create a scalloped border - again I was inspired by the Missouri Star Quilt Company.  You can watch the video for that here (sorry, blogger wouldn't let me embed two videos)

So Stats for the giant pinwheel quilt:

1 Athill Range Layer Cake (I used the whole thing, bar 2 squares, for my pinwheels just matching lights and darks)
40cm fabric for border 1
1.5m fabric for border 2

Quilt is 5 rows of 4 blocks, has a 1" inner border and a 7" outer border.

Finished size 66" x 78"

I'm really happy with it - super quick and easy to put together.  I just need to get it quilted so that I can try out my new scallop ruler!

I'm linking up with Quilt Story and Freshly pieced so head on over and check out more crafty goodness.