Celebrating Michael Miller's 20 Year Anniversary: Pinwheels & Pink Lemonade

Fabrics featured in this post were provided by Michael Miller Fabrics as part of being a Michael Miller Brand Ambassador

Michael Miller Fabrics is celebrating their 20th Anniversary.  In honor of this significant milestone, the Brand Ambassadors were invited to join the celebration by creating a fun and festive project.

My project features fabrics from several different Michael Miller's Basics Collections: Cotton Couture Solids, Garden Pindots, Stripes, and Hash Dot.

Celebrating with Michael Miller's Collections of Basics

Last month, Pam Rocco, a South Bay quilting friend, posted a collection of her absolutely fabulous Pinwheel Quilts onto her facebook page.  Immediately I felt the urge to create a Pinwheel Quilt of my own.  New designs started to swirl in my head, along with waves and curves.  This was my opportunity to play and have some fun!!

Years ago I took a Layered Waves workshop with Karen Eckmeier and absolutely loved her top-stitch applique approach to waves!  Instead of pins, I use Elmer's School Glue to help baste my turned under curves as well as to overlap the adjacent fabrics prior to top stitching.

Elmer's School Glue Basting

Once the top layered curve is top stitched, I turn the unit over and trim away the excess fabric with a pair of fabric shears.  Then each wavy strip was trimmed down into 5" squares.

Time for a Trim

Four wavy squares were then pieced together into a wavy Pinwheel block.  They were so much fun to assemble that I kept making more and more blocks featuring different fabric combinations of a Hash Dot print with a Black or Black & White Background.  In just a day or two, I had amassed 26 blocks and it was time to play with different layouts.  

Making and Editing a Collection of Pinwheel Blocks

I thought it would be fun to create a large Pinwheel with the smaller pinwheel blocks used in the background.  However I was struggled to figure out the construction required and opted instead for a large Plus Sign.  Since I wanted the Plus Sign to be the focus, each quadrant was pieced with the outer borders added first, with the black strips added last to outline the center Plus Sign.  Constructing the top in this order allowed the large cross to come forward and overlay the black and white exterior border.

On The Plus Side

Now of course, it was time to figure out how best to fill in that large Plus Sign.  I explored a variety of Michael Miller solids and prints, which seemed to fall short or overpower the background Pinwheels.  Suddently I remembered some of the remnants saved when I cut out the 5" squares for my blocks.  I pieced them together into a long skinny strip.  It was certainly more interesting but I wished they were wider.  After conferring with a friend, she agreed this was a more promising option and suggested making the black strips skinner.

Plus Auditions

Any remaining fabric was layered into a wavy strata set that was sliced into 5" wide segments for the center Plus Sign (with just an inch or two to spare!!)

Plus More Layered Strata Sets

Originally I had planned to leave the smaller Pinwheels unquilted and fill in the black and white background areas with dense zig zag meander.  Once I finished all the background quilting, the Pinwheels had way too much loft and appeared almost distorted.  I knew they too would need some quilting love of their own to lay flat.  Below are a few of the doodle designs that were auditioned for the pinwheels with the Nesting C-Curves (top right) being my favorite.

Quilting Plans for Pinwheels

The colors reminded me of Pink Lemonade, which gave me the idea of stitching in Lemon Slices into the pink border strips. Stitching out these Lemon Slices was surprisingly fun and easy, as it combines two basic shapes!!  You can watch me demo in this short video.

Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy

 All the pink and yellow units were quilted with C-Curve filler designs and Zig Zag designs were stitched into the black and white backgrounds and borders, making for a very fun mix of quilted textures!

Pinwheels & Pink Lemonade, Finishes 50" x 50"

Last night, Meg Cox, presented her "How Quilters Celebrate Life" lecture at our guild meeting.  She shared some tips for celebrating life through rituals:

• Name it to give it meaning and direction
• Go with the flow and be playful
• Preplan the Unexpected
• Incorporate rituals of gratitude
• Celebrate milestones!

Let's raise a glass of refreshing pink lemonade and toast to Michael Miller's 20-Year Annivesary!  Cheers to 20 Years of designing beautiful fabric collections that inspire Making It Fun!!

Cheers to 20 Years!!