Jan 25

Jan 25 Pinwheel Quilt Step One: Preparation

This summer my brother and I went to Michigan to visit some extended family and go to a friend’s wedding. We had a great time. Towards the end of our stay, my aunt asked if I would make a quilt for her to go in the room I stayed in while I was there. She gave me a vintage handkerchief to use as inspiration. We looked at Pinterest for some ideas of what she liked.

I took the hanky and put the project on the backburner until I finished my MFA program. Nobody had asked me to make a full-blown quilt for hire before. I didn’t know how to proceed. I didn’t worry about putting together a quilt top. The quilting is what had me concerned. My sewing machine isn’t big enough to quilt a full-sized quilt. And hand quilting takes too much time. I was stumped. I left the hanky out where I could see it, and when I needed a break from my thesis or my job search I’d try and solve the quilting puzzle.

While scrolling through Pinterest one afternoon this fall, I saw several posts about Quilt As You Go techniques. I’ve never done it before, but found a few tutorials I thought would be doable. I picked one (but that’s a post for another day).

I drew up a few different designs and presented them to my aunt while she was here for Christmas. We were in the theater waiting for Star Wars to start when I showed them to her.

She made her choice—the first design I drew.

From there it was time to pick the materials. She wanted more floral materials than geometric, and I agreed that would match the hanky best and the design of the bedroom. Before I buy material for projects like this, I want to know how much material I need—when I’m buying fabric randomly I typically go for ½ a yard. First I counted up how many squares of each color I would need. I sketched out a piece of material to see how much I would need.

So I went to JoAnns and scoured the aisles for the perfect fabrics.

Since this project meant using reds/pinks, white, and blues, I decided to prewash the fabric. I don’t do this very often because it takes up time I don’t like to waste. But when using reds it’s a good idea. A lot of people will argue either way. So I say find what works best for you. If you like a little more starch in the material while you’re putting it together, don’t prewash. It’s up to you.

Be sure to iron your material either way. You’ll see in the pictures that my material was still kind of wrinkled after ironing … but they are mostly flat. Some of those wrinkles will come out after the multiple steps of ironing when pressing seams and what not.