Pinwheel Ornament Tutorial

    I've had some interest in my pinwheel Christmas ornaments. I had no pattern, I just made them. If you'd like to make some, here is how I did it.

     For each ornament you need one 3.5 inch square of fabric, one 2.5 inch square of batting, and since I used Thangles to make my HST's, I needed dark and light 1.5 inch strips, and the Thangles of course. You may use any method of making HST's you choose, but for the other measurements to work, your HST's must measure 1.5 inches UNfinished. For more info on Thangles, you can read my earlier post

http://inthedesertquilting.blogspot.com/2008/11/working-with-thangles.html

I am not affiliated with the company or anything. I just heard about them, and wanted to try them. Since I still have some left, that's what I'm using again. 

    If you are using Thangles, put a light strip and dark strip, right sides together, with the light strip on top. Pin the Thangles paper onto the strips. Sew on the dotted lines.

These strips are already sewn. I flipped one strip set over, so hopefully you can see the stitching lines. Cut the strips apart on the solid lines. You need to press the HST's open and remove the paper at this point. The link I put at the beginning of this tutorial goes into using Thangles in more detail.

   No matter which method you used, you should have 1.5 inch HST's now, pressed open. You'll need four for each ornament.

    I like to put my HST's into groups of four. I usually chain sew the top two together, followed by the bottom two. I will do this for as many sets as I have ready to go. When that is done, I cut them apart, press seam to the dark, and sew the top to the bottom.

    Here is where the other pieces come into play. For this particular ornament I fussy cut a Christmas print into a 3.5 inch square. Last year I just used solid fabrics and used a fabric marker to write the date on the ornament. You can do whichever you prefer.

    Place the 3.5 inch square of fabric wrong side up on the ironing board. Place the 2.5 inch square of batting on top of that, centering it on the backing square. Place the pinwheel, right side up over the batting.

   Working on opposite sides, I always do top and bottom, makes no difference though, fold the backing fabric 1/4 inch in towards the center. Press.

   Fold the same sides in 1/4 inch again. We are making the backing into a self binding. Press.

Stitch the top and bottom. Turn the ornament 90 degrees and repeat the last two steps.

    All of the sides of the ornament should be stitched down now. Our backing made an easy binding. By folding twice, we have no raw edges showing, and the binding is just 1/4 of an inch, just the size we wanted to make the pinwheel look correct.

   I hand sew a loop onto the back of the ornament. In this case I used baby rickrack, but anything will do.

    Here is the ornament, all finished and ready for giving. I made several dozen last Christmas. They were a big hit!

    My original idea for these, was to make them double sided pinwheels. I tried sewing them wrong sides  together then turning them, but I was having problems with that because they are so small. My second idea was to still make them double sided, and use a normal binding method. I was having a very hard time getting my binding to stay just where I wanted it, and the corners were just not working for me.  This is the method that worked best for me. I was making a lot of them, and I wanted/needed something fast.  Feel free to adjust this to whatever works best for you, and has the look you're going for.