I’m always experimenting in my sewing studio, trying to come up with new ways to try to
entertain and educate all of you.
Well I was playing with some rectangles when I came out with this fun way to make these
really cool diamonds.
And we’re going to call today’s quilt the Fast Pitch Pinwheel.
Let’s get started.
Dive in close to this design with me if you will.
And the reason we are like I said calling it Fast Pitch Pinwheel is all of the construction
is based on these really cool pinwheels.
And I created them by using a ten inch by six inch rectangle first as a matter of fact.
Kind of doing that sew around all four sides and then cut the bias like we do with our
half square triangles.
And if you do not know that trick, well we’ve got some great videos and I’ll put a link
up at the back of this one for you.
I was using Moda’s line.
This is Yuki created by Debbie Maddie.
And there was a lot of things about this fabric that I loved.
Of course the color and the hand.
I love these Moda fabrics.
But this was a fat quarter bundle but it did have one half yard in it that I was able to
use for all the binding strips around the quilt which I just love it when they do that
for me.
But the other thing I really dug was on this here, on the selvedges Debbie has some really
cool Japanese proverbs.
And on that, this one I loved a lot.
Fall down seven times, stand up eight.
And that message just really hit me in my life this last few months.
And so at any rate, in even the quilting there are some Japanese symbols that have been quilted
into the quilting and everything for peace, love, and joy.
So I had a lot fun taking all of the design concepts and bringing it forward into this.
But I also learned a couple new tricks.
But I”m just going to grab at the moment a medium colored fat quarter and a lighter
colored fat quarter so you can see what we’re doing.
And I”m just pulling them out of the bundle like we have, ok?
Now oh let’s just use a little bit darker so you can really see today.
What I’m going to do with my fat quarters and I thought this was genius if nothing else,
and you probably all already know this trick.
But again we all can learn something new everyday.
But what I’m going to do is I”m going to take my first fat quarter right now and
I”m going to press this to get the lines out.
I”m going to add a little bit of steam.
And what I learned in preparing for my cutting because they are fat quarters which is a 22
by 18 format and I want six by ten inch squares.
So think about, excuse me, rectangles, so think about how nicely that’s going to work
for me, is that I learned that if I press these two fat quarters together at the same
time before I start any of my cutting then everything will be cut, pressed and prepared
to go to the sewing machine.
So this is right sides up.
This one is going to be right sides down right now.
So I’m literally preparing them, like I said, right sides together ready to sew as
soon as my cuts have been made.
That’s efficient and I found it was more accurate because I didn’t have to keep restacking
my rectangles.
Let’s just spend another little second getting this done nice.
And I’m going to do this with all of my different fat quarters.
I’m combining kind of lights and darks and just making sure that I have nice color combinations
all the way through.
Like I said I set the half yard aside so it was ready.
And we’re going to go ahead and cut up all of our fat quarters now but I’m not going
to necessarily sew them all together.
As a matter of fact I want you to leave nine set aside so that, not nine fat quarters just
nine rectangles so that we can leave them for our finishing blocks at the very very
end.
Now this is going to be 18 this way by 22 this way so I should be able to get six perfect,
six inches perfectly that way is what I’m trying to say.
So first of all what I want to do if this is going to be the 18 this way here I want
to make ten inch strips this way.
And I just realized I better use a bigger ruler.
And because of that I’m going to fold it this way, ok?
So now I’m going to cut ten inch strips.
And I’m cutting from that top fold.
And you know what we really should take a moment and make sure that’s really square
too.
We’ve got a little extra down here at the selvedge end.
That’s how I started paying so much attention to what those selvedges had to say.
So I’ve squared that up, oop almost squared it up.
There we go.
Now I’m going to make my tens.
And I handle two fabrics at a time only.
So ten here, set it.
Come down here we should have ten here like this, ok?
We’ll just set that aside, we won’t use it for today’s project.
Now when we open these open like this we can go ahead and stack again our next layers so
we can cut our sixes, right?
Now this is 18 and I found that Moda was a bit generous on their fat quarters so it worked
really nice.
But I’m just going to shave this edge.
I’m not going to, I’m not going to leave too much to chance.
Ok so that’s the shave there.
And now I”m going to get my six inch cuts, ok?
So technically in the quilt it’s the darker pieces that I used for my fill in corners.
So I’m going to use my darkest fabrics, my darkest combinations from my bundle for
those.
But what I’m trying to say is I”m going to set those aside here.
Oh darn it, there we go.
Let’s get these cut, ok?
And then this should be six here too.
See what I mean, beautifully generous like that so I have plenty of fabric I needed.
Now for almost all of those little rectangles now we’re going to just take our two pieces,
remember they’re right sides together which is, I think, really cool.
We’re going to come to the machine and we’re going to go ahead and sew around all four
sides.
And I’m using a quarter inch seam allowance and I’m going to go down one side and right
off the edge.
Leave kind of that needle in my down position, come around.
So now trying to guess where that quarter of an inch ends.
I’m just sewing right off like you run through first base, just like that.
Spin it.
Ok super easy.
Last seam here.
As you’re coming over.
Keep that corner nice in there.
Ok so that’s all set.
So this is stitched all the way around.
I cannot get inside of it unless I introduce my rotary cutter to it.
So the first thing I want to do is I’ve got into this habit of dog earring these corners
just to help with my bulk at the corner there.
So for my stitched rectangles I’m going to now cut right through the sewn line, right
through where my threads cross.
And I’m going to cut them both before I move at all.
So I’m going to cut here once and then I’m going to come over here.
And I’m preparing myself and I’m going to give myself that second cut.
Now what that does is super super cool because like with our normal half square triangle
methods we’re going to get what would be half square triangles but look we get some
pretty neat new units as these open up.
We’re going to get diamonds that are half.
But we get two horizontal diamonds and we get two vertical diamonds, right?
Which I think is really, really cool and of course we’re going to go and we’re going
to press these over here to the dark side.
By holding the dark side up in the air, pressing it down like yay.
Now the reason that these are so fun to play with is they make a bazillion different kinds
of combinations that look different than just when we do our half square triangles.
However the same thing will happen like with half square triangles where you might get
pinwheels that form broken dishes that form hourglasses all over the place.
And that’s what you see happening in the quilt behind me, a lot of secondary designs,
right?
So before I sew these pieces together I want to make this point really come home.
You can do the same thing that I just did but not sew some of these together for these
fill in pieces that we’re going to need to make.
Because the fill in pieces are different shape, ok?
So right now I have not sewn all four sides.
What I’m going to simply do, and I’m not going to worry about dog earring the corners
on these ones either.
I’m going to simply go from corner to corner.
And I’m going to slice this now.
And I’m going to do the same thing.
I”m going to slice this now.
Now what that has done for me is it has given me the pieces I need but later on instead
of this piece and this piece going together what I’m going to really need is this piece
and this piece going together.
So by doing it this way you didn’t have to sew it together and take it apart but that’s
how I did it.
You can probably see some of the seams.
I figured it out later on.
But anyway I think that’s a really cool trick that will help you get your corner pieces.
And I’ll show you how to build the corner pieces into the quilt when you’re done.
But I have so many other things I want to talk about.
I’ve kind of gotten a start with some of these other squares.
I just wanted you to see how those fat quarters worked.
Now what’s going to happen is we have, like I said, a lot of different design opportunities.
So in the samples I’ve already made like this pinwheel I want to make sure they all
stay the same.
So I’m going to make sure that this dark side up here when I start to build my next
pinwheel is right here..
So I built one diamond first and then I make everything else match.
So I go here dark then I have another vertical diamond and it’s going to go opposite sides
colors.
And then I can just go ahead and fill in with my dark, light, dark, light rotation.
Dark, light, dark, light rotation.
So this unit will turn out to be just like this.
And what we now need to do thought because we’re sewing lines that are going to come
together like this but those are those opposite angles, is we need to cheat our quarter of
an inches so when we press this open our seam allowances look good.
So I’m going to come over here and I’m going to run about a quarter of an inch long
on the front, a quarter of an inch long on the back.
And then because we’re now working on the bias please resist pushing or pulling too
hard.
Just let the machine do the work.
Of course if my needle was threaded the machine would do much better work so I better take
a moment for that.
Excuse me.
Ok now we’re getting that start again.
Backstitching and I’m just going to let the machine feed these through.
And your first one or two may not quite line up.
As a matter of fact several of the little seams don’t line up perfectly in there.
But you know what I don’t know that I have a quilt that has every seam lined up perfect
anyway.
I do need to press this to show you what I was referring to.
You can already see here how nice that seam is working.
And whenever the opportunity I am going to press to that dark side by holding that piece
up in the air like that and pressing it over.
Ok, so this here made that first section but it was located down here, right?
So I’ve already built another one of these pieces together.
Let’s see if I can make them come together so I can sew them right?
Just sew these real quick and I will be right back to join those two blocks.
So for finishing out that diamond here we have that up in the air there.
We had this up in the air.
Again double check now because we’re going to sew these together.
And I’m going to try to match up my center seam which is going to still give me that
overlap there of about a quarter of an inch on both sides.
So I’ve got the center seam pinched between my fingers.
And I’m still trying to respect that quarter of an inch overlap at the top.
You might find that that bulk is getting in there between your edge guide so you can see
you can encourage it a little bit there.
And we’re just going to come right on the end.
Perfect.
Now we’re going to come here and we’re going to just press this over.
And we have another pinwheel constructed.
Just like that.
And now let’s go ahead and start showing you how we can construct our quilt on the
diagonals because you have all the information for the parts and pieces for the center.
So you’ll be going over to your design wall.
And what we’re going to do then is everything lays out on the diagonal basically.
So I like to start kind of like in a corner like yay.
And again I’m just using the samples that I’ve already built.
Of course you’ll be mixing your colors much more.
So I have these pieces here.
So then right here, let’s pretend like this is going to be the end of our quilt up there.
So then this piece is going to drift down.
So like a pyramid, I’ve got three, one.
The next row should take five pieces.
The way it will fit in like this.
I think you can see how that’s all coming together.
So now we’re going to have some fill in parts that we’re going to have to fill in.
We’re going to have these top pieces.
And that top piece it looks like this here.
And I’m not sure if that’s easy to see on top of there.
But I’m going to bring it down over here.
Let’s just go ahead and get that out of the way.
And I can slide it down a little bit better so you can see how this corner is going to
work out.
So this is one of the top pieces.
And again this is made out of the pieces that were cut but not stitched.
You’re going to need another corner piece and another corner piece right here to fill
in.
So you just have your dark, light rotations.
So these units also are different than the ones you came up with but made from the same
pieces, right?
And you can even see here where I was removing mine to make mine because I got excited.
I got overzealous, I know believe it or not.
And I stitched all of my ten by six rectangles together.
So you’re going to fill in these as you go around.
And I literally build them in and then build my rows, my diagonal rows of sewing together
by taking a piece like this and then I’m going to bring it right back over here.
I’m going to go right back to my machine.
Same seam allowance, same triangle trick.
And I just work systematically from one diagonal row to the next to the next to make sure I
had all my colors, all my shapes, all my pieces just as I needed them as I built out the quilt
here so that my pieces will start to fill back in.
Then I would sew this piece to this piece, right?
And I just keep making all those diagonal rows.
And when I was all done, I was so excited to bring the quilting together.
And what I did is I printed from my computer because of the Japanese proverbs, the Japanese
symbols for peace, joy, and love.
But my quilting is a little bit too matchy, matchy so you don’t see the big symbols.
There’s a big one in here, a big one in here, and a big one below.
And we’ll flip the quilt over for you for a minute here.
So you can see it much better.
Alright now back to the right sides out.
And once those were laid in and stitched all around then I’m going to go ahead and just
fill in this little stitching with just a basic swirl just to kind of trapunto up or
fill up some of those Japanese symbols for the peace, joy, and love.
And so let me just say this to Debbie for making such a fabulous fabric line and inspiring
me from all the different directions, thank you for giving me the little extra seeds planted
to teach me how to finish this off.
And hopefully create a fantastic tutorial, teach you all something new.
And just have a great time playing with some fabric right here at Man Sewing.
Thanks for being a Man Sewing fan.
It’s great to have you out there encouraging me to create fantastic new content.
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