Framed Pinwheel Quilt Along: Week 2

It’s Week 2 of our Framed Pinwheels quilt along! 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:

Stabilizing Half Square Triangles
Making 4 at a Time Half Square Triangles

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

For this week, we are going to make our Half Square Triangles. We’ll save the trimming for next week. There are a lot of Half Square Triangles in this pattern. So, I decided to schedule making them for this week and trimming them for next week. After that, we can leave the more tedious steps behind and move on to making pinwheels.

A little about 4 at a Time Half Square Triangles

For a long time, the 4 at time method was my favorite way to make Half Square Triangles, but just like with any technique, there are advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of 4 at a time Half Square Triangles
I feel like in a lot of ways this process is a lot simpler compared with making them 2 at time or 8 at time. With the 4 at time Half Square Triangle method, you won’t have to draw any lines. You can also start your seam allowances from the edge of the fabric instead of using the drawn line as a starting point for your seam.

Disadvantages of 4 at a time Half Square Triangles
1) Four at a time half square triangles have bias edges. This is probably the most common reason why some quilters don’t like 4 at a time half square triangle. If you aren’t familiar with bias edges, it just means that the edges of the half square triangle were cut along the diagonal of the fabric instead of vertically and horizontally along the grain of the fabric. This does make the edges a lot stretchier than if it was cut on the grain. If this extra stretch bothers you, starch goes a long way towards motivating them to cooperate.

When I starch my fabrics, I typically starch them BEFORE I cut into the fabrics. BUT, for this particular pattern, I handle the starching a little differently. To get your half square triangle pieces, you’ll need to cut (4) 5″ squares from the layer cake squares. The problem with this is that it’s pretty easy to distort the shape of your layer cake square during starching. Depending on how much wiggle room you have for your cuts and the print on the layer cake squares, this distortion may not be a big deal. However for this pattern, there just isn’t enough wiggle room to get your cuts if you distort the shape of your layer cakes squares.

You may be thinking that if I PRESSED my layer cake squares with the starch instead of IRONING them I wouldn’t have to worry about distorting the shape. You would be correct, but it actually takes a long time to get the starch to dry with just pressing and holding the iron to each spot. Let’s just be honest… I’m not going to do that. So, I use the starch while I’m making the half square triangles. I go over this in my video on Stabilizing Half Square Triangles if you want to check that out. You are also welcome to starch the layer cake squares before you cut into them and press if that’s what you think will work best for you.

2) Some people say they have trouble getting the 4 at a time half square triangles to come out big enough to trim them down to the appropriate size. This shouldn’t be a problem for this pattern because they left you plenty of wiggle room for this.

Here’s a little run down on how to make these. If you prefer a video tutorial, you can find that HERE.

***TIP: When you go to cut the stack along the diagonals, don’t worry about lining the ruler up with the corners of your fabric. Instead, line the ruler up with the points where the stitch lines meet up. This will be a lot more reliably accurate than worrying about lining your cuts up with the corners of the stacked squares.

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 – Gather Fabrics & Cut Pieces
Week 2 – You are currently at the Week 2 post
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, is two patterns from me: Bonnie’s Time Chain and Star Fragments.

These patterns are both in PDF formant. So this prize is available to both a US winner or an international winner.

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 5:00 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.