Prairie Points Pinwheel - a Free Baby Quilt Pattern

I have always loved pinwheel blocks. In fact, one of the first quilt magazines I ever bought was picked because of a pinwheel baby quilt pattern included in it, though I don't know if I ever actually made that particular quilt. I was also intrigued recently by the idea of making a quilt with some 3D element, which led me to the possibility of making pinwheels with prairie points, which is how Prairie Points Pinwheel was born.

I'm sharing the free pattern for Prairie Points Pinwheel on Amy Smart's blog, Diary of a Quilter, today, so head over to that post to get all the details of how to make one of your own. The baby quilt finishes at 36" x 36", which also makes a great wall hanging or table topper size.

While I went with blues (of course!) and a pop of orange, I did create a few mockups in other colour ways. I would love to make all of them!

Can I just say that pinwheels made out of prairie points are ridiculously cute? Not to mention how tempting it is to run your hands over them to flip them back and forth. All while I was working on this, I kept thinking of some little toddler playing with his or her quilt, which definitely increased my own enjoyment.

Prairie Points Pinwheel is stash friendly and even scrap friendly. All of the white background pieces came out of my white scraps, except the long outer borders. I know there are at least three different brands included, so there's some variation in how white the white actually is, which you can kind of see in this picture, but I wasn't at all concerned about that. It is a scrap quilt, after all!

As for the blues, I thought for sure I could cut them from my overflowing basket of blue scraps, but it turns out I have an abundance of small blue scraps and much less in the way of larger pieces. No worries, though, I also have an overflowing drawer of blue yardage and larger pieces leftover from previous projects, so there was no problem finding enough.

At 36" square, this used one of the batting scraps that was too narrow for my usual baby quilts, which are typically 40" or 48" square. Looking through my batting pieces, I'm either going to have to start making narrow wall hangings or placemats, or start piecing the scraps together. I'm not against piecing them together, and I've done it before, but most times I just don't want to take the time for it when I'm ready to baste something. I think I should try to just set aside a time specifically for straightening edges and then piecing them together so they'll be ready to go when I need them. Somehow that doesn't sound as fun as starting a new quilt though, does it?

I chose to quilt the background with my go-to double loop, since it makes me think of the wind blowing pinwheels around. And I gave myself permission to quilt it fairly small, so it would seem to be the right scale compared to the pinwheels (I do still love quilting small, lol). I thought I'd have to pin the prairie points out of the way, but it was easy enough to just hold them back while I quilted under them.

I started out quilting with Aurifil 2024 (white), though I was a little nervous that I would run out before I got to the end. I was right to be nervous and actually only made it through about half of the quilting before the white was gone. Oops! Quilting small really eats up the thread! I debated ordering more, but that would have meant putting the quilt aside for about a week while I waited for the thread to arrive, which I didn't really want to do. So then I decided that Aurifil 2311 (muslin) was close enough that probably no one would ever notice the difference, so I threaded that in and got back to work. As I said before, it's a scrap quilt, so it seemed only right to just go with what I already had on hand.

I love how the unquilted orange cornerstones and seam lines show up on the back!

Another bonus of the 36" size, I didn't have to piece anything for the backing! I can't explain why, but piecing a backing feels like way more work than putting together all of the blocks for a quilt top. This quilt top fit on the width of a piece of yardage, though with only a couple of inches to spare on each side. It was plenty for me, but if you were sending it to a longarmer you'd likely need to piece the backing to give them enough extra on the sides.

Of course, the quilt needed a trip to the beach for its photo shoot! I love how this shot shows off the texture and the 3D-ness of it.

And the golden hour light was perfect! Sometimes it's almost impossible to get a picture of a white quilt that actually looks white, but it was actually pretty easy for this one.

For the full Prairie Points Pinwheel pattern, go to the post on Amy's Diary of a Quilter blog. And when you make yours, I bet you won't be able to resist playing with the prairie points!