The Latest Project - Pinwheel Baby Quilt

I finally decided on my next project when I happened to be visiting a new local quilt store yesterday while out having fun with my family on a day off from work.

I was browsing the store, which had mostly stuff that wasn't quite to my taste (but was a nice little shop full of tons of patterns, kits, notions) and found a whole stack of these Wee Play charm packs in a little nook.

I've been wanting to make a quilt for some friends who are expecting (and who aren't finding out the sex, necessitating gender-neutral gifts) and have been trying to decide on a pattern and fabric.  I really wanted to make this Pinwheel Baby Quilt from the Moda Bake Shop but I only had two charm packs, neither of which would work.  I also really liked the idea of the Wee Play fabrics for a baby quilt good for girl or boy, but only had a Jelly Roll which I had already committed to another project, and which wouldn't work for this anyway (unless I wanted really tiny pinwheels).  So when I came upon these charm packs I grabbed up two, knowing immediately what I would use it for.

I cut my white squares first from Kona Cotton White, and then I separated out the charm squares and chose 24 for the pinwheels.  There are six color families in the Wee Play line (dark blue, light blue, red, green, yellow, and orange) so I chose 4 charms from each color family, coordinating sets of 2 to use in each pinwheel of each color.  I'll end up with two pinwheels of each color.

These are the charms I chose for the pinwheels, although you can't see all the individual ones I chose.  The remainder will be used for the cute prairie points in the pattern.

Rather than following the tutorial exactly, which calls for the charms and background squares to be cut into triangles which are then sew together for the pinwheels, I'm simply pinning the charms to the white squares, marking on the diagonal, and then sewing two lines a quarter inch on either side of the diagonal, then cutting down the diagonal, resulting in two half square triangles.  Feels like this eliminates an extra step or two.

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow or soon after with some more pictures of sewn triangles or perhaps even some finished pinwheels!