Pinwheels & Posies

This is my fourth quilt in the "A Focus Through the Prism, Project Quilting" challenge.  August's theme was the Pinwheel block.  

I really liked the idea of creating pinwheels using a drunkard's path block, but dreaded the idea of all the curved piecing that would be involved.  So I cheated (aka improvised) with some 3-D piecing trickery!  EQ7 was used to draft up different designs featuring a pinwheel flower scene.  Green would be the focus color for this month, so I raided my 2.5' charm squares to create a textured gradient of green ranging from dark at the bottom to light up top.  2.5" charms were also used to create the pinwheel flower petals in an assortment of yellows, oranges, reds and red-violet.

Inspired by the back to school season, I pulled out my bottle of Elmer's glue and glue basted all of the units.  For the flowers petal units, one green square was folded wrong sides together on the diagonal and then the raw edges were glued onto the flower petal background square.  Once iron pressed and glue dried, they were then pieced together into a simple 4-patch.  For the petal units, two green squares were folded in half on the diagonal and glue-basted onto the contrasting green square.  Groups of two or four petals were then pieced together to stagger the rows of flowers.

EQ7 Design draft, scrap attack of green squares, flower block layout and basic pinwheels awating 3-D magic

The quilt top was then layered with batting and a piece of backing and pin basted for the quilting magic to begin.  After stitching in ditch along each stem, figure eights were quilted.  Then it was time to add some 3-D fun by turning back the folded green edges to create gentle curves.  Using a walking foot, these curves were stitched into place.  

Bippity, Boppity, Boo--Blooming Garden Scene!!

Additional decorative spirals and dew drops were free-motion quilted into each of the flowers petals, using a contrasting thread color.

Details of my Pinwheels and Posies

Pinwheels & Posies, 20"x20"

I am linking this post up to Persimmon Dreams where amazingly enough, I am the 4th finisher (usually I fall middle of the pack as I scramble to finish my piece before the end of the  month deadline).  I can't wait to see what the other participants create using Pinwheels!!