Framed Pinwheels Quilt Along: Week 5

It’s Week 5 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. We just have one video for this week.

Make the 9-Patches

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’re going to put our 9-Patch blocks together.

A Few Things to Consider with these 9-Patches

This design is actually a disappearing 9-Patch quilt. For a traditional disappearing 9-patch, you make your 9-Patch block, cut it up, rearrange it, and then sew it back together. I do have some free tutorials for this type of design HERE, HERE, and HERE. For Missouri Star Quilt Company’s Framed Pinwheels pattern that we are using for this quilt along, you put a pinwheel unit in one of the blocks that remain unchanged. This makes for a lovely quilt that looks harder than it actually is.

1. Fabric Placement
Since our 9-patch blocks are going to be cut up, we need to think ahead a little bit and consider this when we place our fabrics. In the graphic below, you see a 9-patch from my quilt that I’m making along with you. The red dashed lines show where I’m going to cut this apart next week. My lines aren’t perfectly centered, but just pretend they are =). You can see that all of the pieces in the center column and center row are going to be cut. The piece in the very center will change the most, being cut into 4 quadrants. So, I don’t want to put any pieces with very large scale prints here because that piece will be chopped up too much to be able to get the full affect of the print.

2. Chain Piecing
Chain piecing can really save you some time, and it’s perfect for making 9-patch blocks! I do go over this in the video for this week.

3. Pressing
Pressing is one of those things that everyone has an opinion on. Personally, I am not a stickler for pressing. That doesn’t mean I don’t think pressing is important. I just don’t care if you want to use a different pressing method than I do. As long as you don’t send nasty messages or make nasty comments about how your method is the only “right way” or calling me incompetent for not using your method, we can still be friends.

That said, for someone who is always saying I don’t care so much about pressing, I do talk about it a lot. Why? I get more questions about pressing than probably any other quilty topic. I’ll be honest, I feel a little bit silly putting pressing instructions in my own patterns since most people are going to just ignore them and press however they want to. For every person who tells me they don’t like how I instructed the pressing in patterns, videos, or whatever, there are probably dozens who either do like my method or recognize that different things work for different people and move on with their lives without feeling the need to let me know they press differently. BUT, since I do get a lot of questions about pressing, I go ahead and include them in my patterns. There’s no way to make everyone happy, so I just instruct what I would do and note that you can always use another method if it works better for you.

For the video this week, my pressing instructions are geared toward nesting seams, reduding bulk, and making it easier for you to keep nice points in your pinwheels. I go over how I do all this in the video for this week.

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 – Make Half Square Triangles
Week 3 – Trim Half Square Triangles
Week 4 – You are currently at the Week 4 post
Week 5 – You are currently at the Week 5 post
Week 6 – Cut, Rearrange, and Resew your 9-Patches
Week 7 – Assemble Your Quilt Top

Prize for this Week

Our prize for this week, from me, @snugglebugstitching, is a copy of my Sound Waves Baby Quilt pattern AND a kit to make the quilt top.

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 of 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.