Pinwheel Quilt Block Pattern Tutorial for 2", 3", 4", 5", and 6" finished blocks

Ready to give your quilting projects an awe-inspiring boost? Try this classic pinwheel quilt block made with a twist - paper piecing!

You'll get all the charm of traditional patchwork designs, but with a lot less trimming.

Plus, you can still chain piece all the units. Perfect for when you're looking for something fabulous with minimal effort. 

General Instructions

Several abbreviations are used on this page. They are:

• SA - seam allowance
• RST - right sides together
• HST - half square triangles

1/4" SA are used through this tutorial. 

Pressing instructions are highlighted in yellow throughout this tutorial to make them easy to spot.

Download and print paper piecing pattern

Use a little dab of Elmer's Washable Glue stick to position the darker #1 triangle on the unprinted side of the pattern. Use the dashed line (that runs through #2 on the pattern) to quickly and accurately line up this first patch. This dashed line represents the 1/4" seam allowance. 

Patch #1 extends past the outside dashed lines of the unit by roughly 1/4". Since we're going to trim to perfection, we want something to trim.

With RST, align the long bias edge of a #2 with that of #1.

Sew the seam starting and ending past the outside dashed edges of the unit.

Press.

To establish the perfect positioning for #3, at your cutting mat with the unit paper side up, fold the pattern back on itself along the seamline between #2 and #3.

You will be pulling the paper away from the seam at the outside edge—at the bottom of the unit (at the '4' on the ruler you can see it).

This is normal.

Position the 1/4" marking on your ruler directly over the fold and trim away the excess fabric.

You've now created the perfect 1/4" placement (red arrow) for the #3.

Back at your sewing machine, with RST, line up #3 with the just-trimmed edge of #2.

Hold the patch in place with your fingers to check that it opens and covers the #3 space. Once you're in your rhythm you won't need to check every time. At the start it's helpful 'cause who wants to start out a session of paper piecing by ripping out the first couple of patches. 

Again, start and end the stitches for this seam past the outside dashed lines.

Press.

And trim just like we did after adding #2.

With RST, position the long edges of #4 with #3 and stitch just like we've stitched every SA.

Press.

Repeat these steps for the second unit.

All that's left is to trim these little beauties to the perfect size.

Back to the cutting mat, paper side up, line up the 1/4" marking with the inner solid line and trim away the excess.

After trimming the hot mess of a unit (left), you've got perfection (right)!

Repeat for the second unit.

We cut our patches, so that the outside edges are all on the straight of grain. That means we can remove the paper pattern now—no bias to worry about stretching out of shape. It's so much easier to remove the paper without that final SA in the way.

Use a tweezer if you need to remove any bits that are left in the angles.

Here it is from the backside.

Remember to go back and download all the free goodies in this tutorial!

A little trick to do with this pattern

If you've been quilting for a while, you've probably come across the idea of taking parts of quilting stencils to make new quilting designs.

There are opportunities to do the same thing with paper piecing patterns. 

Do you make scrappy Flying Geese...ones that are made from 2 HST pieced together?

Then this is your pattern!

The only thing to be aware of is the direction of the seam allowance. Renumber the order of piecing to meet the needs of your pattern.

Here's our scrappy Flying Geese sample from the front. I used 2 low volume backgrounds for the sky and 2 dark purples for the Goose.