Purple Pinwheels Quilt


Here is a quilt I finished back in December, but have somehow neglected to post on it until now. Considering the history of this quilt, the fact that it has taken this long to get around to posting makes perfect sense. I started making this quilt in 2006. At the time, my desk at work was right under the air conditioning vent, so I was freezing all the time. I decided to make myself a quilt to wrap up in so I could concentrate more on my work and less on how cold I was. I found this totally darling purple fabric for the pinwheels and started making it. I finished all the blocks really quickly and sewed the sashing on...stepped back to admire my work...and knew immediately that I would be taking it all apart. It was SO crooked--none of the blocks lined up with each other...it was awful! Once I had all the blocks apart, I realized that there would be no saving them...the seam allowances were too small to fudge effectively, and they were all stretched out...so I decided to just start over. Sadly I didn't have enough of the cute purple left, so I found something mediocre to replace it, and remade the blocks.


I love this block, but somehow it was just hard for me to make (the pattern for the block came from a Judy Martin book that I now can't remember the name of). The second set of blocks were still very crooked, and were ridiculously hard to square up. But this time, I got smart and marked sewing lines on the back of the blocks that would make them square. It took forever, but it worked and I finished piecing it. Well by that time I had gotten a new desk at work that was away from the air conditioner, and my motivation to finish it was gone...so into the closet it went. Two years later, I decided to pull it out and quilt it.

I had to piece the back with every last little scrap I could find...originally the checkered border was going to go on the front, but I didn't have enough green after I remade the blocks, so luckily it worked for the back.


After it was quilted I put it back in the closet because I couldn't decide what to use for binding. Then almost another 2 years later, I needed one more quilt for the little calendar I made myself for Christmas...so I pulled it back out of the closet, bound it and snapped a couple quick pictures...and voila! Say hello to Miss January!


Now that it is finally finished, it has been hanging on the quilt rack in my studio and I have been using it at my desk when I get cold...so see, it is finally serving its purpose after all!