Framed Pinwheel Quilt Along: Week 1

Our Framed Pinwheels quilt along starts today! This pattern is from Missouri Star Quilt Company, my favorite Missouri Star pattern. You can read a little more about that and why it’s my favorite HERE.

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:

Intro and Playlist Navigation
Gathering Fabrics
Working with PreCuts
Cutting

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.

Gather Fabrics
All of the main part of the quilt top can be made with PreCuts. You’ll need a layer cake for the foreground, two charm packs for the background, plus your yardage for the inner and outher borders. I’ll be using some gorgeous fabrics that were gifted to me by Missouri Star Quilt Company. For the foreground, I’ll be using a Benartex layer cake from the Delightful Daisies line.

Part of our task of choosing fabrics involves thinking ahead a little bit. You will only need (35) 10″ squares, but the layer cake has (42) squares. So, we need to decide which (7) squares we are going to leave out. I chose mine based on which squares won’t show up as well against my charm pack that I’m using for the background. I’m using Solitaire White by Maywood for these. It’s a very subtle, very pretty white on white print. So, I decided to take out (7) of the white prints from my layer cake. This quilt has a lot of pinwheels. Pinwheels are a LOT of work with all half square triangles you’ll have to make and trim. After all that work, I want them to show up well! You can check out my video to see more about my thought process.

Cut Pieces
I like to trim my layer cake squares down to perfect 10″ squares before I cut them into (4) 5″ squares. This is because pre-cuts are not standardized. So, it’s easier to just square these off while I’m cutting them into to the (4) 5″ squares, and it’s still faster than cutting all of your pieces from yardage. I know a lot of quilters don’t like pre-cuts because they think they aren’t as accurate, but in my opinion they are just misunderstood. I have a blog post and a video with tips for working with pre-cuts.

Before I start trimming my charm squares down to precise 5″ squares, I think ahead to my pinwheels and pick the foreground prints. For the pinwheels, I avoid large scale prints because they’ll just be cut up beyond recognition in the tiny pinwheels anyway. I also keep in mind how well it will show up against the background fabrics.

Once I have my prints selected for the pinwheels, I go ahead and stack them right sides together with my background squares. Confession: I don’t trim down the charm squares that I’m going to use for the half square triangles since I’m going to have to trim the half square triangles anyway. After all the stacks are made for the half square triangles/pinwheels I do trim the rest of the charm squares to precise 5″ squares.

You can watch my full cutting demo HERE.

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 Half Square Triangles
Week 3 – Trim Half Square Triangles
Week 4 – Make Pinwheels
Week 5 – Make 9-Patches
Week 6 – Cut, Rearrange, and Resew your 9-Patches
Week 7 – Assemble Your Quilt Top

Prize for this Week

Our prize for this week, sponsored by Cut Loose Press and The Gypsy Quilter is going to be a set of all of my patterns with Cut Loose Press. These are complete patterns that print on the front and back of one page. You can check out all of patterns with Cut Loose Press HERE. I like working with Cut Loose Press because it’s a great way for me to bring you some super affordable patterns; they’re only $3.99 (US dollars).

This one is for US winners only due to shipping costs. If the winner is an international quilt alonger, I will send you one of my 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 Monday at 7:00 PM Central Time. You must tag me @snugglebugstitching and Missouri Star Quilt Company @missouriquiltco in your posts and use the #framedpinwheelsqal and #msqcshowandtell.

Here are the Instagram accounts you need to be following to be elligible for prizes:
@snugglebugstitching
@benartex_fabrics
@missouriquiltco
@cutloosepress
@thegypsyquilter

-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.