22. How to Piece a Pinwheel Quilt Block

It’s Monday which means it’s time to piece a new block! This month we’re also stitching it up a notch as we learn how to piece triangles for this Pinwheel Quilt Block:

free motion quilting | Leah Day

When I first started quilting I was SUPER intimidated by triangles. I thought it was going to be SO tough to cut and piece triangle shapes. It turns out with half square triangles at least, you don’t ever have to cut out an actual triangle shape. We’re going to work with squares the whole time!

Are you looking for the fabric requirements and cutting instructions? Find all the information you need in the Building Blocks Quilt Pattern.

free motion quilting | Leah Day
Click Here to check out the PRINT version
free motion quilting | Leah Day
Click here to check out the DOWNLOAD version

So pinwheel blocks really aren’t so tough after all! By piecing from two squares, we never had to work with a triangle shape. You do need to be gentle with that center diagonal seam, and pay close attention to the center area where all the seams join, but if it doesn’t work out perfectly, who cares?!

free motion quilting | Leah DayI went on a bit of a rant at the end of this video expressing my hope that you won’t beat yourself up if your center seams don’t match. Seriously, there’s no point to yelling at yourself or beating yourself up if your pinwheel doesn’t piece perfectly.

We’re going to cover this block with beautiful quilting designs that will easily hide any mistakes in that trickiest part of the block. Piece of 4 blocks because we have 4 fun weeks of quilting coming up this month!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

LeahDay

Leah Day has been teaching online since 2009. She's the creator of the Free Motion Quilting Project, a blog filled with thousands of quilting tutorial videos. Leah has written several books including 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs, Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day, and Mally the Maker and the Queen in the Quilt.

3 Responses

  1. Jacque says:

    Leah, Thank you so much for an awesome tutorial…I've been doing half square triangles for a while, and I learned from this! I especially liked the tip on placing the pins on the final seam, and your "rant" is appreciated! Many of us fight that monster in our head, and we need to instead pat ourselves on the back and point to our progress. I hope you don't mind if I put a link to this on my blog. Thanks again!
    Love, Snoodles at Lilypadquilting

  2. Leah Day says:

    Thank YOU Jacque! I'm glad to hear this video was helpful. Of course, I'd love it if you shared this on your blog. Links are always welcome!

  3. Janet says:

    I pieced my first pinwheel block – only one point is slightly "off." I can live with it and hopefully my FMQing will distract from the slight imperfection.

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