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This is a two block quilt, made from scraps, and results in a quilt that looks like it has been set on point. One block is the pinwheel block, and the other is a sixteen-patch. Blocks are 8”. For a queen size quilt, you will need 50 of each. (10 x 10) and a 6 or 8 inch border. For a king, you will need 72 of each block (12 x 12) plus a border. |
For the sixteen patch block, you will need 25 light strips and 25 dark strips, if you use the full length of fabric. If you are cutting from fat quarters, you will need 50 light strips and 50 dark strips, cut the long way on the fat quarters. Sew four strips together: dark, light, dark, light. This is a strip unit. Sew all your strips into units like this. Iron towards the dark strips. Then cross cut them into 2-1/2” units. If you don’t mess up, you should get 16 cuts from the full width, or eight from the fat quarter strips. When you sew them back together, combine different fabric strips, reverse every other strip.
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| For the next block, we will do the fastest way to make half square triangles. These will be 4 inch finished (in the quilt), so we start with a 5 inch grid. These are great for fat quarters. Lay a dark fat quarter on your mat, face up, and put a light fat quarter on top of it, face down. Smooth or iron them together. Using your ruler and a fine-tip permanent pen (trust me on this), draw a 5” grid. On a fat quarter, it will be 15” x 20”. If your fat quarters are generous, you may be able to get a 2 ½ inch strip as well. If not, cut a 1 ½ inch strip and save it for a future quilt. Then, starting in one corner, draw diagonal lines as shown, again with the permanent pen. |  |
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You will then sew ONE QUARTER INCH FROM the diagonal lines, on both sides. Don't sew ON the lines! You can sew the whole thing without ever taking it out of the machine. When you have sewn the whole thing, CUT ON THE MARKED LINES. This makes 24 half square triangles. |
Iron them open and trim to 4 ½ inches (optional, and tedious). For the queen size quilt, you will need 200 half square triangles, so you could do it with 9 dark and 9 light fat quarters, and you’ll have some extra in case some come out wonky. If your stash is in some other configuration than fat quarters, you can always cut a billion 5 inch squares (actually 200). I’ve found that if you trim the pinwheels to 8 ½ inches, you don’t really have to trim each half square triangle for this quilt. You may have some points that don’t meet precisely, but it’s all in how perfect you want it. You can make a few extra pinwheel blocks and just throw out the ones with bad centers. When you assemble the pinwheel blocks, be sure the darks are always in the same direction. If your darks are in the top left on the first block, you want it that way on all the blocks.