Pinwheel Popper Quilt Along: Week 1

Our Pinwheel Popper Quilt Along starts today! This is a pattern I wrote for Southern Charm Quilts for her resource library a little over a year ago. My initial motivation for this one was that I wanted to write a pinwheel pattern that didn’t require trimming any half square triangles. So, as ar as pinwheels go, these are some of the easiest you can make.

Edited: The quilt along is finished, but you can still read all of the posts from previous quilt alongs at the Quilt Alongs Page.

Videos for this week

I’ve been making lots of videos for this quilt along: demos, advice, reveals and such. Here are the videos I have for this week:

Fabric Selection
Label Reveal
Cutting Demo

I will be adding videos throughout the quilt along. You can view all of the currently available videos at any time in this playlist.

On the schedule for this week

This week we’re going to gather our fabrics and cut our pieces. I’ll be using some gorgeous fabrics from Meander and Make (affiliate link). I used fabrics from Clover and Ethereal for the quilt I’m making for the quilt along (affiliate links).

For my original quilt, I used Garden Therapy (affiliate link) , also by Meander and Make. I love how the original looked with the greens and peaches.

Choosing your fabrics

I go into this more in the video, but the most important thing is to pick three colors that contrast for the different parts of the quilt. We’ll use my original Pinwheel Popper quilt pictured above as an example. For the pinwheels (Color 1), I used (3) 1/2 yard cuts of white fabric. For the pinwheel blades (Color 2) I used (4) 1/2 yard cuts of green fabric. For the background, I used (4) 1/2 yard cuts of peach/orange shades. The contrasting colors are what makes the design stand out.

Cut your pieces

If you would like to see how I save time with cutting the pieces you can check out my demo HERE. I like to use my smaller cutting mat (18″ x 24″) to my advantage to speed up cutting. Just know that this is how I cut the pieces for this quilt. If you prefer another technique, do what works best for you!

Get a custom label for your quilt

I had some labels made for this pattern! If you want a custom Pinwheel Popper label with your name on it, you can get one! I order all of my labels from Melanie at Southern Charm Quilts/Meander and Make. They are great labels. You can get order your Pinwheel Popper Quilt label HERE (affiliate link). Use the coupon code SNUGGLEBUGSTITCHING at Meander and Make for 10% off.

Each Week on the Blog

I’ll link to all of the other weeks near the end of each post. I will add each post here as I have them. You can also find this on the Quilt Alongs Page.

Week 1 – You are currently at the Week 1 post
Week 2 – Make 5 Blocks
Week 3 – Make 5 Blocks
Week 4 – Make 4 Blocks
Week 5 – Make 2 Blocks, Assemble Top

Prize for this Week

Our prize for this week is going to be a rotary cutter and pack of blades from Missouri Star Quilt Complany (affiliate link). As of the time I wrote this post, they have lots of rotary cutters and blades on sale! I thought that this would be the perfect prize for this week since we are cutting our pieces. I love the fun colors in the rotary cutter and the funny quotes on the blades! I do have the blue and gray version of this rotary cutter, and I love it! This one is for US winners only due to shipping costs. If the winner is an international quilt alonger, I will send you the PDF pattern so you don’t miss out on getting a prize.

To be eligible for prizes:

– You must be following me and all our sponsors on Instagram and post at least one progress picture for the week on Instagram by Tuesday at 5:00 PM Central Time. You must tag me @snugglebugstitching in your posts and use the #pinwheelpopperqal and #pinwheelpopperquilt.
Here are the Instagram accounts you need to be following to be elligible for prizes:
@snugglebugstitching
@southerncharmquilts
@meanderandmake
@benartex_fabrics
@missouriquiltco
@cutloosepress
@checkerdistributors

-I will announce the winner on Instagram and tag the lucky quilt alonger so that they know they’ve won. The winner will have one week to contact me to claim the prize. Any unclaimed prizes will be forfeited.