Double Pinwheel Quilt Block ~Tube technique ~ The Sewing Channel

hi friends this is tracy from the sewing channel welcome back and if you're new here welcome in today's tutorial i'm going to show you how we can get our double pinwheels moving if you stay with me to the very end i will show you some different variations of this pinwheel enough talking already let's get moving so for today's patriotic block i decided on some grunge two and a half inch strips look at all this beautiful patriotic red white and blue fabric that i got at walmart i mean what a great deal they had fat quarters and they had some yardage too this fabric is so cute so i'll go through this you can see some anchors i mean look at that watermelon i just love this the lobster pattern oh my word it's cute i mean you can see i got one in every pattern one that i saw was cutest of all was this check out this pinwheel 4th of july patriotic pinwheel fabric i mean is this darling or what so cute i mean really what a find so this is how we're going to make this striped block right here we're going to use the tube method and if you haven't heard of that or seen it i'm going to show you exactly how to do it i took my two and a half inch strip and i cut it right in half and how i did this to help me make sure i got it right in the middle i actually folded it in half and then i ironed it and then i cut along that iron mark that was helpful to make one full block of the stripes you're going to need about 10 inches in length and these are one and a quarter inch in width now you can see here that i fussy cut this this is going to help our block have motion so when you look at it it'll give that illusion of a pinwheel hopefully cross your fingers on that one so in order to make this stripe you're going to need a darker fabric and then a medium to light fabric in between there so that it gives that nice contrast of the stripe so you will need five pieces and make sure that your dark pieces are on the ends so i'm just going to go ahead and take this to the sewing machine and i'm going to sew all of these together with a quarter inch seam allowance so this is what you should have once you sew a quarter inch seam allowance on all of those strips now this ends up measuring approximately about four and a quarter inches in width it depends on how big your quarter inch seam allowance was that you used on what that width is going to end up being i found this really cute uh i don't know what they're called those wish flowers or when you blow on them they scatter they're really they're really sweet it sort of reminded me of fireworks for the fourth of july so i thought how fitting is that you need to make sure that this is high contrast for these two you do have the high contrast here in the medium to low print and then you have the darker shade well you need this is the other side this is going to be the other side of this one see that one see how that goes right there so this is going to be the other side so you want this one to stand out so you want this to be a low value low volume print or um white on white like this one had polka dots and all that so so this right here is four and a quarter inches it's going to match this now what you're going to do is take it to the sewing machine and you're going to sew a quarter inch seam right there and along that edge right there we're essentially going to be making a tube out of this right here so this is it all sewn up right there i did get a little wonky right there hopefully it all works out and then here's this side right here so this is what you should have just like that it's a tube so this right here is about four and a quarter inches we had said you want to measure from edge of fabric to edge of fabric and we want to measure in four and a quarter inches now if you're a little wonky on the end here you can trim some of that make that straight so we want to come in about four and a quarter inches so one two three four and our quarters right there and then once we get that we want to go ahead and just slice it right there see set that right there and then you want to grab another one you'll need two of these sets for this block you want to measure four and a quarter and then cut now i do have enough for one more block there and essentially what you want to do is just make a whole strip of these depending on how many you're going to make the next step is we're going to cut these at a diagonal now after you've sliced them though you want to make sure that you don't set them aside and forget about them right now and do them later you want to cut them right away on the diagonal and the reason for this is if you even get it turned this way or this way it's going to change the whole outcome of how your block looks and we want these to be the same so i'm going to put those back like that it's amazing how easily it does change too cut from corner to corner and we want to make sure that the diagonal is in the same position as well meaning we don't want the diagonal to go this way on this one and then this way on this one we want them to be uniformed so we'll show you what we have here we open those up and look at how pretty oh my goodness so in here i'm just going to finger press these real quick right like that you want to give those a good press so if you look here this is that block right here a different colorway so even these by themselves are really cute that right there gives us a teeny tiny pinwheel all by itself there and you see that wave in there just gives a lot of movement but we don't want to stop there we want to make this a double pinwheel which gives it a lot more character and a lot more movement to the quilt block so let's set these aside for right now you wouldn't think that that goes well together because it's the same pattern it ends up having so much movement it makes the block look harder than what it actually is so for this block right here you're going to go corner to corner and cut right from corner to corner you end up with four half square triangles so let's put this together real quick and i'll show you how this movement happens we're gonna pull one of these these are really easy to get mixed up too this looks like my quilt block is literally moving i mean that's what it does for my eyes now before we sew that together i just wanted to show you some different variations so if we take these out i even like this one right here now i even used a different fabric within here it's still stars but it has like a different contrast look at how that just waves in there and then with the stripes it just almost makes it look a little psychedelic right imagine this possibly in a different color way that's not fourth of july you could do different contrasting colors and really make this quilt block pop let me take these out again red and i did blue blue here's yeah another combination right here for this demonstration i'm going to sew these together because i just really think that that pops so this is how we're going to sew this up we're going to take these two blocks and sew them on the diagonal right there we're going to take these two blocks and sew those on the diagonal together these two and so our quarter inch seam there and our quarter inch seam here so let's see what we have so far looking good it's like a puzzle piece right yeah now it's time to square this block up we're going to clean it up a bit the main thing that i'm going to keep an eye on is this right here we need to keep an eye on the center if you're not watching and paying attention how you're going to trim this block this will happen [Music] now i went ahead and sewed it together i already knew that it was going to be way off but i just wanted to go ahead and sew it to show you what it looks like when you've cut too much on one side and that was an accident and it happens there's nothing i could have done to fix this particular block i will have to make a brand new one and insert it in there because once you cut remember measure twice cut once rule oh yeah i think i didn't measure we've all been there though right i'm not the only one let me know down in the comments have you made big huge mistakes by not measuring twice and you just went ahead and just cut through yeah it's unfortunate but i mean we could still put a button right there or embellish something right in the center but i'm not sure yet what i'm gonna do with that so i do notice here that because of my sewing which isn't always that great i have a problem sewing straight this one these three look more alike in the points than this one so i can take off a little bit more on that little edge this edge right here and that's going to help that match up so i'm going to go ahead and do this one first this is a five and a half inch squared ruler right here and it has this diagonal on it so the first thing i'm going to do is line up the diagonal on this diagonal the long side this right here now i already know i need to take off a little bit there i'm probably going to end up with a five and a quarter inch block turn it around there and now we're going to hit the diagonal going this way and since i already know it's probably going to be about five and a quarter inches i can line it up there on the quarter inch mark and keep that center that diagonal so if i go back looks a little better and i'm going to stay away from that edge if i can on the rest of them and we'll see what we end up with this one needs to come in a little bit too on that tip so if i line up my diagonal here and make sure that i've covered that quarter inch around everything that's going to be just flush there which is good take a little bit off that tip turn it put it on the diagonal make sure that it's at the quarter inch and it's on the diagonal so we're straight there i want you to notice here how that's going to give us that tiny pinwheel in the center how cute is that we actually could have changed one of the colors of our stripe too and made this maybe navy and then it would spread out to the red that would be cool too i'm loving how this is turning out okay so our next step is to take the top two pieces and sew those together and that together right there and then we'll go ahead and finish up the block this is what you should have so far those two blocks are sewn and those two blocks are sewn then we're going to flip it over and your seam allowance is going that way hopefully the seam allowance will go this way yup now we're going to sew these two together so we're just going to put those together like that and we're going to nest those middle seams together really good this is what i like to do whenever i'm trying to center things up i always pull it back about a little quarter to a half and make sure that everything is nesting at the same time because you see those two white pieces right there and on that side we want those points to come together so once you have that you might want to pin that and then we can square these up this way sometimes what i do when i need points to match up in the center i will actually start sewing just before that center line that center point start sewing there my quarter of an inch and then go down and then i check it and make sure everything's right and then i turn it in the sewing machine and then i do that side so that's just a tip for you if you really need it to match up perfectly and that's how i would do it and that's how i'm going to do it on this one let me just show you i started right there just past that center point and down i didn't sew that part yet but then i check it to make sure and that looks pretty good i'm i really like how it's turning out and i'm actually going to open the seam up and iron it flat i am going to use my wood block i find this little wood piece right here i ordered online it's called a clapper and let me tell you it's a game changer when you are making quilt blocks if you want everything to lay as flat as it can lay flat as far as it'll lay flat you definitely need a piece of wood and this is just raw wood i don't know it's like a magic wood block right but really there's no magic in it it's just wood before i square this block up i just wanted to share with you if you wanted to put some cornerstones and sashing and such around this you can this just goes to show that you can manipulate your fabric and fussy cut it in a certain way so that it actually gives you that effect of movement let's show you with this one there's with the blue stars that looks cute too now this is a lighter version you can see here that there's not as much contrast in this lighter version as with this one right here with the darker blue and the darker red it's more of a contrasting but yet i still find that i can see the pinwheel in this because of this right here being light so you'll want to keep that in mind when you make this block it looks awesome with the blue striped fabric here on the inside being the inner pinwheel but also we can switch it around so that the white is actually the pinwheel just simply by switching out the white for the striped and turning it this way you get a totally different look on this block i really like it that way too until next time on the sewing channel keep it moving and take care

Channel: The Sewing Channel

Views: 21,038

Rating: 4.9642859 out of 5

Keywords: double pinwheel quilt block, double pinwheel block, pinwheel quilt block, tube technique for pinwheel quilt block, twin peaks pinwheel quilt block, moving pinwheel quilt block, tube method for pinwheel quilt block, double pinwheel quilt, pinwheel quilt, fourth of July quilt block, red white and blue quilt block, red white and blue quilt, exploding pinwheel quilt block, quilt block sewing tutorial, the sewing channel, Double pinwheel quilt block pattern

Id: L_Z742MltN0

Length: 19min 34sec (1174 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021