I started this pinwheels top quite a while ago now. The pinwheels are the “bonus triangles” that I had leftover from this top - Spools and Stitches. Picture of that one is on the left. I hope to get it finished SOON.

I had those leftover pieces and I really wanted to use them. They were kind of small half square triangles though.

I also didn’t have a whole lot of them!

So I made a sort of medallion quilt. My variety of pieces are getting smaller as to variety and colors. It is stretching my creativity a bit about now, but that’s fine. In fact, that’s normal— if I can use my Upcycled Blues as my example.

I had this one sitting mostly done for weeks. I kept waiting to get inspired as to the last border. I wanted something that wouldn’t overwhelm the center but would definitely be interesting. I played and worked on it and worked some more. I kept trying to come up with a sort of chain block - or even half square triangles, but the numbers just wouldn’t work right.

And...always I had to remember what fabrics I had left to be able to use. So here’s what I came up with.

I am not a real big fan of a regular pinwheel block, but on point and with some spacing, I find them quite acceptable. I still prefer the other kind I made in another quilt in the UP Blues series. But that’s not for this post.

I used white to help with the contrast as I am starting to get down to using light greens or greens with some white in the print.

Not all of the pinwheel blocks are all that great. I didn’t get the centers to line up well on many of them. Part of that is because as bonus triangles, some of them were “small”. If you have used bonus triangles, then you may know what I mean.

However, I know once the quilting is done, esp. dense quilting, things become crinkly and a bit lumpy so the imperfections become much less noticeable.

The border blocks are cut 4.5” and using 2.5” white squares, I “snowballed” the corners to make the pointed end.

In the end, I am quite happy with this quilt top. It is now 94”x98” as a finished top.

Of course, let me state the obvious “problem”. This final border creates still MORE “bonus triangles” as I made those points. I was very, very tempted to just trim them off and throw the trimmings away. Then I caught myself and said, “But where’s the challenge in that?” and I didn’t. I have a zipper type bag with all of them in it.

So now this finishes quilt top number 27 in this series. I am getting close to getting my greens into two big plastic boxes. Very close. :) The only thing as I write this - I do have a couple of bags of strips - a nice sized one of 1.5” strips and a smaller bag of 2” strips. I have almost no 2.5” squares or strips right now. But I can cut more at any time, of course from my remaining scrappy type pieces. I’m kind of waiting to see what I need before I process those last pieces in my ‘cut up’ box.

With this top done, I’m still actively working on two more with a fair bit of white in them - and will start on another one very soon - but with not so much white. As it gets down to the end, I work with smaller and smaller pieces - really those 1.5” strips will get utilized.

AND

I know I’ve been showing the series a lot lately because I’ve been finishing up quite a few tops lately - but here’s the series from the start.